Ann Petry
(b. 1911)

Ann Petry read widely as a young child and decided when she was only 14 years old that she wanted to become a writer. She worked as a newspaper reporter in New York City after college. She first worked in the advertising department of the Amsterdam News between 1938 and 1941 and then edited the woman's page and did general reporting for People's Voice from 1941 to 1944. Her first book, The Street, was set in Harlem, in northern New York City. Her short stories have appeared in magazines. Growing up in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Petry decided that Harriet Tubman stood for everything indomitable, or not easily discouraged, in the human spirit. In response, she wrote Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955).

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