φPorter, Katherine Anne1890╨1980writerBorn in Indian Creek in Brown County, Texas, on May 15, 1890, Katherine Anne Porter was a distant cousin of William Sydney Porter (O. Henry). Educated at private and convent schools in the South, she began to write early in life but did not publish any serious work until 1922, when her first story, ╥Maria Concepcion,╙ appeared. In the meantime she supported herself with newspaper and literary hackwork in Chicago, Denver, and elsewhere. Her first collection of stories, Flowering Judas, appeared in 1930 and immediately established her as one of the leading American short-story writers. The purity and textured richness of her style were hailed by critics. Slow to produce the small body of work by which she was known (although she wrote quickly when finally ready to set words to paper), she produced during the 1930s only three books╤Hacienda, a Story of Mexico, 1934, based on the Mexican experiences of Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, Noon Wine, 1937, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider, 1939, a collection that reprinted Noon Wine along with the title story and a story called ╥Old Mortality.╙ Although her reputation was firmly established, none of her books sold widely, and Porter supported herself primarily through fellowships, by working occasionally as an uncredited screenwriter in Hollywood, and by serving as writer-in-residence at a succession of colleges and universities. Although she had published in 1944 The Leaning Tower, stories, and in 1952 The Days Before, essays, reviews, and prefaces, and had won an O. Henry award for her 1962 story, Holiday, the literary world awaited with great anticipation the appearance of her only full-length novel, on which she had been working since 1941. When Ship of Fools finally was published in 1962 it pleased most critics and gained Porter her first large readership. A best-seller made into a major film in 1965, it told of the ocean voyage of a group of Germans back to their homeland from Mexico in 1931, on the eve of Hitler╒s takeover of Germany. Her carefully crafted, ironic style was perfectly suited to the allegorical exploration of the collusion of good and evil that was her theme, and the penetrating psychological insight that had always marked her work was evident in the book. Her Collected Short Stories appeared in 1964 and was another popular and critical success, winning a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. In 1967 she was awarded a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Later books included A Christmas Story, with drawings by Ben Shahn, 1967, her Collected Essays and Occasional Writings, 1970, and The Never-Ending Wrong, on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, 1977. She died on September 18, 1980, in Silver Spring, Maryland. ╢styl ` " ! ¬ 5¬ ! 5¬ ) !I !I !I w !I Æ !I π !I ∞ !I ° !I !I 2 !I ; !I } 5¬ ~ !I ┼ !I ╓ !I φ !I ⁿ !I O !I V !I σ 5¬ µ !I δ !I ° !I !I $ !I
