Carson McCullers, when she is remembered, is remembered as a novelist who grew up in Columbus, Georgia, moved to New York in her twenties, and spent the rest of her life writing about misfits in the American South. Her characters are mute or too tall or black or queer and almost always lonely and out of place in conservative small town that looks a lot like her own. In 1940, her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, brought her fame at twenty-three. Her books were made into films and Broadway plays. One of her best friends was Tennessee Williams—she called him Tenn—and she feuded with copycat Truman Capote for years. She married the same man, Reeves McCullers, twice, and is rumored to have chased after women. She was often drunk, chronically ill, and, like so many of her era, she died young. If you’ve heard of her, you’ve probably heard some version of this.
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