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Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, poet, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in the United States that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. In 1966, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter.
Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, as Callie Russell Porter to Harrison Boone Porter and Mary Alice (Jones) Porter. Although her father claimed maternal descent from American frontiersman Daniel Boone, Porter herself altered this alleged descent to be from Boone's brother Jonathan as "the record of his descendants was obscure, so that no-one could contradict her". This relationship was unfounded. Porter was enthusiastic about her own genealogy and family history, and spent years constructing a "quasi-official" version of her ancestry alleging descent from a companion of William the Conqueror, although "most of the genealogical connections she boasted did not exist." The writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) was claimed as her father's second cousin, but later research established that "except the accident of her name", there was no connection. Despite her focus on her family history, Porter failed to identify her relationship to Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States, his grandmother being the sister of Porter's uncle-by-marriage. The rest of Porter's family did not take her genealogical embellishments seriously, considering them to be part of her character as an "accomplished raconteur".
In 1892, when Porter was two years old, her mother died two months after giving birth. Porter's father took his four surviving children (an older brother had died in infancy) to live with his mother, Catherine Ann Porter, in Kyle, Texas. The depth of her grandmother's influence can be inferred from Porter's later adoption of her name. Her grandmother died while taking 11-year-old Callie to visit relatives in Marfa, Texas.
After her grandmother's death, the family lived in several towns in Texas and Louisiana, staying with relatives or living in rented rooms. She was enrolled in free schools wherever the family was living, and for a year in 1904 she attended the Thomas School, a private Methodist school in San Antonio, Texas. This was her only formal education beyond grammar school.
In 1906, at the age of 16, Porter left home and married John Henry Koontz in Lufkin, Texas. She subsequently converted to his religion, Roman Catholicism. Koontz, the son of a wealthy Texas ranching family, was physically abusive; once while drunk, he threw her down the stairs, breaking her ankle. They divorced in 1915.
In 1914, she escaped to Chicago, where she worked briefly as an extra in movies. She then returned to Texas and worked the small-town entertainment circuit as an actress and singer. In 1915, she asked that her name be changed to Katherine Anne Porter as part of her divorce decree.
Also in 1915, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the following two years in sanatoria, where she decided to become a writer. It was discovered during that time that she had bronchitis, not TB. In 1917, she began writing for the Fort Worth Critic, critiquing dramas and writing society gossip. Before 1918, Porter was married to, then divorced from, T. Otto Taskett then Carl Clinton von Pless. In 1918, she wrote for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. While there, she almost died during the 1918 flu pandemic. When she was discharged from the hospital, she was frail and completely bald. When her hair grew back, it was white and remained so for the rest of her life. Her experience was reflected in her trilogy of short novels, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), for which she received the first annual gold medal for literature in 1940 from the Society of Libraries of New York University.
In 1919, Porter moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and made her living ghost writing, writing children's stories and doing publicity work for a motion picture company. The year in New York had a politically radicalizing effect on her; in 1920, she went to work for a magazine publisher in Mexico, where she became acquainted with members of the Mexican leftist movement, including Diego Rivera. Eventually Porter became disillusioned with the revolutionary movement and its leaders. In the 1920s she also became intensely critical of religion, and remained so until the last decade of her life, when she again embraced the Roman Catholic Church.
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Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, poet, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in the United States that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. In 1966, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter.
Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, as Callie Russell Porter to Harrison Boone Porter and Mary Alice (Jones) Porter. Although her father claimed maternal descent from American frontiersman Daniel Boone, Porter herself altered this alleged descent to be from Boone's brother Jonathan as "the record of his descendants was obscure, so that no-one could contradict her". This relationship was unfounded. Porter was enthusiastic about her own genealogy and family history, and spent years constructing a "quasi-official" version of her ancestry alleging descent from a companion of William the Conqueror, although "most of the genealogical connections she boasted did not exist." The writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) was claimed as her father's second cousin, but later research established that "except the accident of her name", there was no connection. Despite her focus on her family history, Porter failed to identify her relationship to Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States, his grandmother being the sister of Porter's uncle-by-marriage. The rest of Porter's family did not take her genealogical embellishments seriously, considering them to be part of her character as an "accomplished raconteur".
In 1892, when Porter was two years old, her mother died two months after giving birth. Porter's father took his four surviving children (an older brother had died in infancy) to live with his mother, Catherine Ann Porter, in Kyle, Texas. The depth of her grandmother's influence can be inferred from Porter's later adoption of her name. Her grandmother died while taking 11-year-old Callie to visit relatives in Marfa, Texas.
After her grandmother's death, the family lived in several towns in Texas and Louisiana, staying with relatives or living in rented rooms. She was enrolled in free schools wherever the family was living, and for a year in 1904 she attended the Thomas School, a private Methodist school in San Antonio, Texas. This was her only formal education beyond grammar school.
In 1906, at the age of 16, Porter left home and married John Henry Koontz in Lufkin, Texas. She subsequently converted to his religion, Roman Catholicism. Koontz, the son of a wealthy Texas ranching family, was physically abusive; once while drunk, he threw her down the stairs, breaking her ankle. They divorced in 1915.
In 1914, she escaped to Chicago, where she worked briefly as an extra in movies. She then returned to Texas and worked the small-town entertainment circuit as an actress and singer. In 1915, she asked that her name be changed to Katherine Anne Porter as part of her divorce decree.
Also in 1915, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the following two years in sanatoria, where she decided to become a writer. It was discovered during that time that she had bronchitis, not TB. In 1917, she began writing for the Fort Worth Critic, critiquing dramas and writing society gossip. Before 1918, Porter was married to, then divorced from, T. Otto Taskett then Carl Clinton von Pless. In 1918, she wrote for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. While there, she almost died during the 1918 flu pandemic. When she was discharged from the hospital, she was frail and completely bald. When her hair grew back, it was white and remained so for the rest of her life. Her experience was reflected in her trilogy of short novels, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), for which she received the first annual gold medal for literature in 1940 from the Society of Libraries of New York University.
In 1919, Porter moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and made her living ghost writing, writing children's stories and doing publicity work for a motion picture company. The year in New York had a politically radicalizing effect on her; in 1920, she went to work for a magazine publisher in Mexico, where she became acquainted with members of the Mexican leftist movement, including Diego Rivera. Eventually Porter became disillusioned with the revolutionary movement and its leaders. In the 1920s she also became intensely critical of religion, and remained so until the last decade of her life, when she again embraced the Roman Catholic Church.