Katherine Anne Porter

Porter married four times – her spouses at different times were Koontz, Ernest Stock and two men much younger to her, Eugene Pressley and Albert Russel Erskine. She claimed to have married poet Hart Crane.

She endured many miscarriages, a stillbirth, and an abortion between 1910 and 1926. She is supposed to have contracted gonorrhea from Stock and underwent a hysterectomy, ending her hopes of motherhood.

She died on September 18, 1980 at 90, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her ashes were buried at Indian Creek Cemetery in Texas. In 2006, she was featured on a United States postage stamp.

Born on May 15, 1890 as Callie Russell Porter, Katherine Anne Porter’s mother Mary Alice died when she was 2 years old. Her father Harrison Boone Porter left his four children with their paternal grandmother in Kyle, Texas.

Her grandmother raised the siblings, but died when Callie was eleven. The children stayed with relatives. She did her schooling in free schools in Texas and Louisiana, and could not study beyond grammar school.

In 1906, she married John Henry Koontz, who belonged to a rich family. The marriage was an unhappy one, as she was subjected to violence by him, and ended in divorce nine years later.

In 1915, Callie fled to Chicago and began working as an extra in movies. Returning to Texas, she assumed the name Katherine Anne Porter to satisfy her divorce order.

Between 1915 and 1918, she was diagnosed wrongly with tuberculosis, when she had bronchitis. She contracted flu which left her weak. She wrote for ‘The Critic’ and ‘The Rocky Mountain News’ during the time.

In 1919, she transferred to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, she sustained herself by ghost writing and writing children's stories. She worked for a motion picture company as a publicity person.

In 1920, she worked for a magazine in Mexico. She admired the Mexican Leftist movement initially, but, later became disenchanted. Her cynicism towards religion also changed in the last years of her life.

In the next decade, she published numerous short stories. 'Maria Concepcion’, her first published story, featured in ‘The Century Magazine’. In 1930, her first book, ‘Flowering Judas and Other Stories’ met with moderate success.

The novel, ‘Ship of Fools’ (1962), based on her ocean cruise to Germany, received critical praise. The work is distinct because it is both allegorical and metaphorical.

‘The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter’, published in 1965, won two major awards. It consists of nineteen "short stories and long stories”. She did not like to term her short stories ‘novellas’.