Carson McCullers
(1917–1967)

Carson McCullers became a literary success at the age of 23 with the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, she was the daughter of Lamar Smith and Marguerite Waters. As a young girl, she displayed a great deal of musical talent. When she turned 17, she left Columbus for New York City to study music at the Julliard School of Music. As fate would have it, McCullers's plan for a career in music was altered when she lost her tuition money on a New York City subway. However, she stayed on in New York, working odd jobs while taking writing classes at both New York University and Columbia. In 1936, at only 19 years old, her story "Wunderkind" was published. The following year she married Reeves McCullers, a young man from Georgia whom she had met on a trip back to Columbus.

After the publication of The Heart is Lonely Hunter in 1940, McCullers moved to a Brooklyn brownstone, which became a haven for such varied talents as Anaïs Nin, W. H. Auden, Leonard Bernstein, and Salvador Dali. In 1941, McCullers published her second novel, Reflections in a Gold Eye. That same year, she suffered a stroke; the first of three that would finally leave her partially paralyzed.

Throughout the final years of her life, McCullers wrote four more novels, including The Member of the Wedding (1946) and The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951). She died in Nyack, New York at the age of 50.

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