Katherine Anne Porter: A Brief Biography, by Alexandra Subramanian

Katherine Anne Porter pulled herself up from a life of hardship, dislocation, and severe loss in rural Texas to become a major American author and one of the most compelling literary figures of the twentieth century. Although Porter had little formal education, she was inspired to read the classics from a young age. She spent her youth surviving hardships and working toward “contributing something worth having to the world,” believing from an early age that she was meant to move beyond the poverty and obscurity that seemed her destiny.

Porter became visible on the literary scene in 1922 with the publication of “María Concepción” in Century Magazine, and, from that moment on, the author spent a lifetime fulfilling her promise by becoming one of the finest practitioners of the art of the short story. Her literary achievement culminated with the publication of The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1964), which received the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Her short stories secured her reputation as a classic American author, but she did not become a national literary celebrity until 1962, when she published her bestselling novel Ship of Fools, made into a Hollywood movie starring Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, and Lee Marvin.

Porter experienced and observed many of the major events of the twentieth century. She lived in Greenwich Village during its cultural and literary heyday and Mexico during its cultural revolution of the 1920s. In the early thirties, she experienced Berlin during the years when Nazism was on the rise, after which she moved to Paris during a time of impending war. She then returned to the United States and lived there throughout the years of the Cold War. As she moved from place to place, she established long-lasting friendships with many of the literary lights of the era, including Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Sylvia Beach,Glenway Wescott, and Malcolm Cowley.

The writer’s brilliant correspondence with some of the most fascinating literary figures of her day comes vividly to life when encountered in collections at the University of Maryland Libraries and other repositories. Porter scholars have illuminated the life and work of one of the most compelling writers of the modern era. Yet Porter’s archive is vast and rich. There is still much work on Porter to be done, and we encourage you to consult the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter and other primary resources documenting her life and work in your quest to learn more about the author.

Read a longer biography in the finding aid for the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter.