27 Facts About Sanora Babb

Sanora Louise Babb was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor known for her realistic portrayal of life during the Great Depression Era.

Sanora Babb's best known work, Whose Names Are Unknown, 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.

Sanora Babb's writing focuses on the themes of marginalized people and their connection to nature during the Great Depression.

Sanora Louise Babb was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, the elder daughter of Walter L and Anna Jeanette "Jennie" Babb, while her father was living in what is Red Rock, Oklahoma.

Sanora Babb's father was a professional gambler who moved his family frequently.

Sanora Babb wrote about her experiences from this time period in her life in her The Lost Traveler, 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, a memoir that tells Sanora Babb's story of homesteading in the Great Plains from the time she was seven years old.

Sanora Babb 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.

Sanora Babb began working as a printer's assistant at 12 years old.

Sanora Babb moved to Los Angeles in 1929 to work for the Los Angeles Times, but the newspaper retracted its initial offer following the US stock market crash of 1929.

Sanora Babb was occasionally homeless during the Depression, sleeping at times in Lafayette Park.

Sanora Babb eventually found secretarial work with Warner Brothers and wrote scripts for radio station KFWB.

Sanora Babb joined the John Reed Club and was a member of the US Communist Party for 11 years.

In 1938, Sanora Babb returned to California to work for the Farm Security Administration, a position that would deeply influence the composition of her novel Whose Names Are Unknown.

Sanora Babb turned the stories she collected into Whose Names Are Unknown and sent the first few chapters to Random House.

Sanora Babb edited the literary magazine The Clipper and its successor The California Quarterly, helping to introduce the work of Ray Bradbury and B Traven.

Sanora Babb resumed publishing books in 1958 with her novel The Lost Traveler, followed in 1970 by her memoir An Owl on Every Post.

Sanora Babb's shelved Dust Bowl novel Whose Names Are Unknown was released by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2004.

Sanora Babb had an affair with Ralph Ellison between 1941 and 1943.

Sanora Babb met the Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe, and they traveled to Paris in 1937 to marry.

Howe and Babb did not legally marry in California until 1948, after the court case Perez v Sharp overturned the state marriage ban.

Sanora Babb returned to the US in 1951 and settled in Los Angeles, California.

Sanora Babb became part of the LA writing group started by Ray Bradbury and taught classes on fiction at UCLA.

Sanora Babb continued to write and publish well into her eighties.

Sanora Babb passed away in her Los Angeles home on December 31,2005, at the age of 98 due to natural causes according to her editor, Joanne Dearcopp.

Sanora Babb left no immediate survivors, but Joanne Dearcoppe, who knew Babb for over 60 years, was named literary executor.

Sanora Babb's works are tied to many areas of contemporary literary and cultural studies, including Regional Studies, Great Plains Studies, Dust Bowl Studies, California Studies, and Rural Studies.

In California, the family experiences more hardship, staying in migrant farm camps like those Sanora Babb had volunteered in and observed.