24 Facts About Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet.

Carson McCullers's first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States.

Carson McCullers's stories have been adapted to stage and film.

Carson McCullers was named after her maternal grandmother, Lula Carson Waters.

Carson McCullers's great grandfather on her mother's side was a planter and Confederate soldier.

Carson McCullers's father was a watchmaker and jeweler of French Huguenot descent.

Carson McCullers worked several odd jobs, including as a waitress and a dog walker.

In 1940, at the age of 23, writing in the Southern Gothic or perhaps Southern realist traditions, Carson McCullers completed her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

Carson McCullers sold the book to Harper's Bazaar for five hundred dollars in August 1940.

The novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe depicts loneliness and the pain of unrequited love; at the time of its writing, Carson McCullers was a resident at Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Carson McCullers died a fortnight before that film's premiere in October 1967.

Carson McCullers lived nearby, and one day when Buzz and I were out for a walk she hailed us from her doorway.

Carson McCullers was then in her early 20s, and had already suffered the first of a series of strokes.

Carson McCullers's passion was not reciprocated, and the two remained friends with Carson McCullers dedicating her next novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, to her.

Carson McCullers dictated her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare, during the final months of her life.

Carson McCullers suffered throughout her life from several illnesses and from alcoholism.

Carson McCullers lived the last twenty years of her life in Nyack, New York, where she died on September 29,1967, at the age of 50, after a brain hemorrhage.

Carson McCullers's style is often described as Southern Gothic, as the majority of her works take place in the Southern United States and feature eccentric characters suffering from loneliness interspersed by moments of deep empathy.

The center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; to nurturing American writers and musicians; to educating young people; and to fostering the literary and musical life of Columbus, the state of Georgia, and the American South.

In 1944, when Carson McCullers's father died, her mother left Columbus and moved to Nyack, New York, where she bought her daughter's famed Nyack home.

Carson McCullers lived with her mother and sister off and on in this house for a number of years, eventually buying the house from her mother.

Carson McCullers was living in this house when she died in 1967.

At Dr Mercer's death in late April 2013, the Carson McCullers Center inherited not only the house but many artifacts and documents that shed light on the last ten years of Carson McCullers's life.

Carson McCullers influenced Edward Albee, who adapted her novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe into a play.