Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom one daughter later alleged she had physically and sexually abused. Sexton’s work continues to be widely read and studied for its emotional intensity and innovative style.

Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mary Gray (Staples) Harvey (1901–1959) and Ralph Churchill Harvey (1900–1959). She had two older sisters, Jane Elizabeth (Harvey) Jealous (1923–1983) and Blanche Dingley (Harvey) Taylor (1925–2011). She spent most of her childhood in Boston. Sexton's early home life may have been materially comfortable, but may not have been emotionally. It is known that Sexton's parents were often abusive. In 1945 she enrolled at Rogers Hall boarding school in Lowell, Massachusetts, later spending a year at Garland School. She lived with her great aunt 'Nanna' - her "greatest confidante", who was also institutionalised. For a time she modeled for Boston's Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948, she married Alfred Muller Sexton II and they remained together until 1973. Sexton had her first child, Linda Gray Sexton, in 1953. Her second child, Joyce Ladd Sexton, was born two years later. Shortly after, Anne Sexton had her first breakdown and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. Sexton continued to suffer with her mental health for the remainder of her life, which is embedded in her poetry.

After giving birth to her daughter Linda in 1953, Sexton started to suffer from postpartum depression and symptoms of bipolar disorder which was diagnosed in 1954. However, it wasn’t until after the birth of her second daughter, Joy, in 1955 that her postpartum depression worsened and she attempted suicide for the first time, which resulted in her being institutionalised in Westwood Lodge in 1956. It is here she met Dr Martin Orne, who became her psychiatrist for the next 8 years. He suggested that she write poetry as an outlet for her struggles telling her 'You can't kill yourself; you have something to give. Why, if people read your poems' [...] they would think, "There's somebody else like me!" They wouldn't feel alone.' Between January and December 1957, Sexton brought Orne 60 meticulously finished poems.

In 1957, Anne attended her first communal poetry workshop at the Boston Centre for Adult Education ran by John Holmes. Sexton felt great trepidation about attending the class as she felt she was incomparable to many there as she had no formal training in poetry; she called her friend and asked her to come with her. To her surprise, a number of her poems were featured in magazines by Saturday Review, Harper’s Magazine and in The New Yorker, one of which being ‘Sunbathers’ in their June 13^th, 1959 issue. In the fall of 1958, Sexton began attending Robert Lowell’s poetry seminar held at Boston University where she met him and later Sylvia Plath and George Starbuck in 1959.

Sexton’s first poetry collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was published in 1960, which explored the raw taboos surrounding mental illness. The title gives hints into Sexton’s chaotic experience with the inclusion of ‘Bedlam’, the infamous London psychiatric hospital, as well as ‘Part Way Back’ revealing the struggle it has taken to get merely close to normality. An extensive collection along with the popular, widely recognised poem, ‘Her Kind’, was published, which explored the wrongful vilification and patriarchal oppression women faced through the image of witches.

Sexton and Plath’s relationship was short lived due to Plath’s death in 1963. Lowell observed, when they were both in his class, that they could benefit from one and other, “the tightly controlled Plath could benefit from Sexton's "looseness." When Sylvia died, Anne expressed profound feelings of grief, jealousy and betrayal to Dr. Orne, quoting, “Sylvia's death disturbs me. Makes me want it too. She took something that was mine, that death was mine! Of course it was her's too. But we both swore off it, the way you swear off smoking.” To honour her tumultuous, yet valuable friendship, Sexton wrote 'Sylvia's Death', which was first published in 1963 in TriQuarterly magazine, before being published in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Live or Die, in 1966.

Sexton's poetic career was encouraged by her mentor W. D. Snodgrass, whom she met at the Antioch Writer's Conference in 1957. His poem "Heart's Needle" proved inspirational for her in its theme of separation from his three-year-old daughter. Sexton first read the poem at a time when her own young daughter was living with her mother-in-law. She, in turn, wrote "The Double Image", a poem which explores the multi-generational relationship between mother and daughter. Sexton began writing letters to Snodgrass and they became friends.^{[citation needed]}

While working with John Holmes, Sexton encountered Maxine Kumin. They became good friends and remained so for the rest of Sexton's life. Kumin and Sexton rigorously critiqued each other's work and wrote four children's books together. In the late 1960s, the manic elements of Sexton's illness began to affect her career, though she still wrote and published work and gave readings of her poetry. She collaborated with musicians, forming a jazz-rock group called Her Kind that added music to her poetry. Her play Mercy Street, starring Marian Seldes, was produced in 1969 after several years of revisions. Sexton also collaborated with the artist Barbara Swan, who illustrated several of her books.