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Born Callie Porter in Indian Creek, Texas, Katherine Anne
and her three siblings were raised by their maternal grandmother
after their mother died. The family lived in poverty, and
when Porter turned sixteen she married both to leave home
and to find security. But Porter did not take to domestic
life and soon separated from her husband, turning to a life
of travel and career changes -- moving to Denver, New York
City, Mexico, and Europe; writing for a Dallas newspaper and
freelancing in Mexico, where she composed her first short
story. Porter's fiction is characterized by a strong sense
of locale, and much of her work explores the tensions faced
by women as they negotiate their place in the modern world.
Porter's careful attention to planning and revising her work
-- sometimes over a period of several years -- resulted in
the publication of only four story collections and one novel,
each considered a literary event. Her books of short fiction
are Flowering Judas (1930), Noon Wine (1937),
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), and The Leaning
Tower (1944); her novel is Ship of Fools (1961).
The Collected Stories was published in 1965, bringing
Porter the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the
Gold Medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts
and Letters.
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