Born in St. Louis on February 8, 1851, to a prominent family, Katherine O╒Flaherty received her education in a convent school, supplementing it with her own wide reading. In June 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, with whom she lived in his native New Orleans and later on a plantation near Cloutiersville, Louisiana, until his death in 1882. Soon afterward Chopin returned to St. Louis. She began writing of her experiences in the South, and after an undistinguished first novel, At Fault, 1890, her powers developed rapidly. She became a regular contributor of stories to children╒s magazines and to the leading literary journals of the day and published two collections, Bayou Folk, 1894, and A Night in Acadie, 1897, which were quickly recognized as major additions to the local-color genre. Her lush descriptions of Louisiana scenes, her sympathetically realistic delineations of Creole and Cajun characters and society, and her finely wrought plots won her a lasting place in American literature.
Chopin╒s second full-length novel, The Awakening, 1899, a bold and penetrating psychological study of a young woman╒s sexual and artistic longings, proved too candid about its subject for many critics, however; their attacks on its portrayal of mixed marriage and other commonplaces of bayou life may have contributed to her virtually giving up writing. Chopin died in St. Louis on August 22, 1904.
