Chronology

1947	3 February: born in Newark, New Jersey, to Samuel and Queenie (nee Bogat) Auster. With sister, grows up in New Jersey suburb. Sam is a landlord who owns several buildings with his brothers. Marriage is unhappy.
1954	Uncle Allen Mandelbaum, professor of comparative literature and prolific translator, leaves boxes of books in family home and Auster develops intense interest in writing and literature.
1965	Skips high school graduation and travels to Europe, visiting Italy, Spain, Paris, and Dublin. Enrolls at Columbia University, studying English and comparative literature.
1966	Spring: begins relationship with Lydia Davis.
1967–68	Goes to Paris for junior year abroad, but quits college after a little while there; lives in small hotel on the rue Clément; November 1967, returns to U.S.
1968	Reinstated at Columbia; participates in student strike (April) and is arrested and jailed with 700 others.
1969	June: graduates Columbia.
1970	Completes M.A. at Columbia. Contemplates further graduate school but instead takes job with the Census Bureau. Works for six months as seaman on tanker in Gulf of Mexico. Discovers among family papers that his grandmother murdered his grandfather when his father was seven years old.
1971	February, leaves for Paris; Lives in France working at odd jobs, including a telephone operator at the Paris bureau of the New York Times.
1973	Moves to Provence where he and Davis work as caretakers of a farmhouse.
1974	Returns to U.S., settling in New York, and on 6 October marries writer Lydia Davis; life is difficult with crumbling marriage and miniscule income from writing reviews, four slim volumes of poetry, and doing translations.
1976–77	Writes four one-act plays.
1977	Son, Daniel, is born.
1978	Writes first novel, Squeeze Play (published 1982) under pseudonym Paul Benjamin (his middle name; this “person” would later appear as a blocked writer in the film Smoke).
1979	14 January: Father dies and leaves Auster inheritance; begins fiction writing in earnest; writes The Invention of Solitude, in part about his father.
1980	Publishes White Spaces, “a little work of no identifiable genre,” after attending rehearsal of dance performance; moves to apartment in Brooklyn—here receives two wrong-number phone calls, intended for the Pinkerton Detective Agency—that later lead to his writing City of Glass.
1981	After divorce from Davis, on 23 February meets writer Siri Hustvedt at a poetry reading.
1982	Marries Hustvedt on 16 June (Bloomsday); edits and writes introduction to The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, containing his translations of forty-two poems by various poets; also publishes The Invention of Solitude, a memoir.
1986	Takes position as lecturer at Princeton University, post he holds until 1990; eventually Auster and Hustvedt move to Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn; Edgar Award nominee for City of Glass.
1987	Daughter, Sophie, is born.
1989	Prix France Culture de Littérature Étrangère for The New York Trilogy.
1990	Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
1991	PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction finalist for The Music of Chance.
1992	Film version of The Music of Chance, with screenplay by Philip and Belinda Haas and cameo appearance by Auster.
1993	Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan.
1995	June: film Smoke (writer and uncredited co-director) is released; October: film Blue in the Face (writer and co-director).
1996	Bodil Awards—Best American Film: Smoke; John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence; Independent Spirit Award for Smoke.
1999–2000	Participates in National Public Radio’s National Story Project.
1998	Lulu on the Bridge (writer and director).
1999	Honorary Doctor of Letters from Williams College.
2001	Timbuktu wins Arcebispo Juan de Clemente prize for best foreign language novel.
2002	Narrates NPR’s Peabody Award–winning “Sonic Memorial Project,” about the 9/11 attacks.
2003	Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; finalist for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Book of Illusions.
2004	Narrates “Ground Zero,” audio guide produced by National Public Radio; wins Dalton Pen Award for Multimedia/Audio (2005) and is nominated for an Audie Award for best original work; Blue Metropolis Award (Montreal) for body of work.
2005	Vice-president of PEN American Center; Honorary Doctor of Letters from Pratt Institute.
2006	Prince of Asturias Award for Literature (received in previous years by Günter Grass, Arthur Miller, and Mario Vargas Llosa); elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters for Literature.
2007	Honorary doctorate from the University of Liège; Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; The Inner Life of Martin Frost (writer and director); First Annual Best of Brooklyn Literary Award, presented by the Brooklyn Book Festival.
2007–08	Board of Trustees, PEN American Center; later, member of Advisory Council.
2008	Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brooklyn College.
2010	Medaille Grand Vermeil de la Ville de Paris.
2011	November, Naples Prize for Sunset Park.
2012	April: First Annual NYC Literary Honors in the Category of Fiction; August: latest book of memoir, Winter Journal, released.