Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. A stage adaptation of her novel The Member of the Wedding (1946), which captures a young girl's feelings at her brother's wedding, made a successful Broadway run in 1950–51. Her work is often described as Southern Gothic and indicative of her Southern roots. Critics also describe her writing and eccentric characters as universal in scope. With such such influences as Isak Dostoevsky, Chekhsky, and Tolstoy, she published eight books; the best known are The Heart is a Lonely Hunters (1941) and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951) McCullers was a resident at Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she wrote and exhibited her work.