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Sanora Babb
Sanora Louise Babb (April 21, 1907 – December 31, 2005) was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor known for her realistic portrayal of life during the Great Depression Era.
Over the span of her career, she published eight books including novels, a memoir, short story collections, and a volume of poetry. After her death, she was featured in the Ken Burns 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl.
Her best known work, Whose Names Are Unknown (2004), received much critical acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Spur Award for the Best Western Novel and the 2005 PEN Center USA Literary Award for fiction. The novel had been written decades prior – John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Grapes of Wrath" had been based on Babb's field notes from interviews of migrant camp families compiled for her own book. Her boss, camp manager Tom Collins, had asked her to provide a copy of her notes to Steinbeck, who dedicated his novel to his wife and to Collins, "who lived it," with no attribution to Babb, whose own work was submitted to her publisher shortly thereafter.
Her short stories and poems have also won recognition. Her short stories "Wildflower" and "Santa Ana" were included in The Best American Short Stories (1950 and 1960 editions) edited by Martha Foley. Her poetry collection, Told in the Seed, won the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award in 1967 and her poem "Captive" from the Mitre Press Anthology, London won the Gold Medal Award in 1932. Babb's writing focuses on the themes of marginalized people and their connection to nature during the Great Depression. Her other works include The Lost Traveler (1958), An Owl on Every Post (1970), The Dark Earth and Other Stories (1987), Cry of Tinamou (1997), Told in the Seed (1998), On the Dirty Plate Trail (2007), and The Dark Earth and Selected Prose from the Great Depression (2021).
Sanora Louise Babb was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, the elder daughter of Walter L. and Anna Jeanette "Jennie" (née Parks; later Kempner) Babb, while her father was living in what is now Red Rock, Oklahoma. While neither of her parents belonged to the Otoe tribe, living in a Native American community gave Babb a heightened sensitivity to the relationship between the land and its people. Her father was a professional gambler who moved his family frequently. After betting on a future in dry-land farming, Walter moved his wife, Sanora, and her younger sister Dorothy to a one-room dugout on a broomcorn farm settled by her grandfather, Alonzo Babb, near Lamar, Colorado.
Babb wrote about her experiences from this time period in her life in her The Lost Traveler (1958), an autobiographical novel that depicts a rambling gambling father from his daughter's perspective as she comes of age in the Great Depression and in An Owl on Every Post (1970), a memoir that tells Babb's story of homesteading in the Great Plains from the time she was seven years old. The town in An Owl on Every Post is Two Buttes, in Baca County, to the south of Lamar which is in Prowers County.[citation needed]
After four unsuccessful years in farming, her father moved the family to Elkhart, Kansas and then to Forgan, Oklahoma in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Babb began attending school at eleven. She graduated from high school as the Valedictorian. Afterward, her father moved the family again to Kansas. She began studying at the University of Kansas but after one year, her lack of financial resources forced her to transfer to a junior college in Garden City, Kansas.
Babb's volunteer work brought her alongside migrant farming communities. This volunteer work with the Farm Security Administration would greatly influence her novel Whose Names Are Unknown.
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Sanora Babb
Sanora Louise Babb (April 21, 1907 – December 31, 2005) was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor known for her realistic portrayal of life during the Great Depression Era.
Over the span of her career, she published eight books including novels, a memoir, short story collections, and a volume of poetry. After her death, she was featured in the Ken Burns 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl.
Her best known work, Whose Names Are Unknown (2004), received much critical acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Spur Award for the Best Western Novel and the 2005 PEN Center USA Literary Award for fiction. The novel had been written decades prior – John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Grapes of Wrath" had been based on Babb's field notes from interviews of migrant camp families compiled for her own book. Her boss, camp manager Tom Collins, had asked her to provide a copy of her notes to Steinbeck, who dedicated his novel to his wife and to Collins, "who lived it," with no attribution to Babb, whose own work was submitted to her publisher shortly thereafter.
Her short stories and poems have also won recognition. Her short stories "Wildflower" and "Santa Ana" were included in The Best American Short Stories (1950 and 1960 editions) edited by Martha Foley. Her poetry collection, Told in the Seed, won the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award in 1967 and her poem "Captive" from the Mitre Press Anthology, London won the Gold Medal Award in 1932. Babb's writing focuses on the themes of marginalized people and their connection to nature during the Great Depression. Her other works include The Lost Traveler (1958), An Owl on Every Post (1970), The Dark Earth and Other Stories (1987), Cry of Tinamou (1997), Told in the Seed (1998), On the Dirty Plate Trail (2007), and The Dark Earth and Selected Prose from the Great Depression (2021).
Sanora Louise Babb was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, the elder daughter of Walter L. and Anna Jeanette "Jennie" (née Parks; later Kempner) Babb, while her father was living in what is now Red Rock, Oklahoma. While neither of her parents belonged to the Otoe tribe, living in a Native American community gave Babb a heightened sensitivity to the relationship between the land and its people. Her father was a professional gambler who moved his family frequently. After betting on a future in dry-land farming, Walter moved his wife, Sanora, and her younger sister Dorothy to a one-room dugout on a broomcorn farm settled by her grandfather, Alonzo Babb, near Lamar, Colorado.
Babb wrote about her experiences from this time period in her life in her The Lost Traveler (1958), an autobiographical novel that depicts a rambling gambling father from his daughter's perspective as she comes of age in the Great Depression and in An Owl on Every Post (1970), a memoir that tells Babb's story of homesteading in the Great Plains from the time she was seven years old. The town in An Owl on Every Post is Two Buttes, in Baca County, to the south of Lamar which is in Prowers County.[citation needed]
After four unsuccessful years in farming, her father moved the family to Elkhart, Kansas and then to Forgan, Oklahoma in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Babb began attending school at eleven. She graduated from high school as the Valedictorian. Afterward, her father moved the family again to Kansas. She began studying at the University of Kansas but after one year, her lack of financial resources forced her to transfer to a junior college in Garden City, Kansas.
Babb's volunteer work brought her alongside migrant farming communities. This volunteer work with the Farm Security Administration would greatly influence her novel Whose Names Are Unknown.