Holiday (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Katherine Anne Porter was born Callie Russell Porter on May 15, 1890, in Indian Creek, Texas, and lived a life that rivals any fiction. In her ninety years, she endured poverty, hardship, and severe illness; married and divorced four husbands; spent time with revolutionaries, literary giants, and powerful politicians; and traveled extensively. She witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and at age 82, covered the launch of the first mission to the moon for Playboy magazine.

Porter's life matched her flamboyant personality; she was gregarious, flirtatious, and quick to anger. Her lively social life often stalled her work, and she had many years in which she produced nothing but reams of correspondence. She lived much of her life in different countries, including Mexico, Germany, France, and Belgium.

Her mother died when Porter was just two, after which she was raised by her strict grandmother, who died when the child was eleven. Her father sank into depression after her mother's death and showed little interest in his children. Mired in poverty, she was eager to escape by marrying. At fifteen she married John Henry Koontz, the twenty-year-old son of a wealthy Texas family. But the couple was unhappy. Still, Porter remained legally married to Koontz for nine years, making this the longest of her four marriages.

Porter's first writing job was on the Fort Worth Critic. After a couple years in the newspaper business, she moved to New York and in 1920 published her first short stories. During the 1920s she wrote many stories that remained unfinished until much later in her life, including "Holiday." She also lived in Mexico for a time. Stories she published during this time include "Virgin Violeta," "Magic," "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," and in 1929, "Flowering Judas," which was her most acclaimed work to date. In 1927, while in Massachusetts, Porter joined many other literary figures in protesting the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who had been convicted of a brutal murder in Boston in 1921.

Porter began the 1930s with an unproductive (though lively) two years in Mexico where she met her third husband, Eugene Pressly. (Her second, Eugene Stock, she had married in 1924 and divorced in 1926.) In 1932, Porter and Pressly sailed to Europe on the S.S. Werra. Porter later used many of her experiences on the ship for her one and only novel, Ship of Fools. The couple lived briefly in Germany then in Paris, before returning to the States. In Paris, Porter published several stories, including "The Grave," "That Tree" and "Hacienda." In 1935 the collection Flowering Judas and Other Stories was published. In 1937 Porter's stories "Noon Wine" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" were published in small literary magazines; in 1939 they were published along with "Old Mortality" in Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels, which drew great critical acclaim. Porter left Pressly and then married Albert Erskine, a young graduate student, in 1938, which quickly proved to be a mistake. In 1940 Porter and Erskine separated, and Porter took up residence at Yaddo, the artists' colony in New York, where she wrote "The Leaning Tower."

The 1940s were unproductive. Porter contracted with publishers for many projects but finished few. In 1945, she accepted a position as a screenwriter. Though she was highly paid, she found the censorship intolerable. In 1948 she taught one year at Stanford University then returned to New York.

In 1953, Porter taught at the University of Michigan, and the next year, she taught at the University of Liege, Belgium. In 1955, she returned to the States and completed her novel in the fall of 1961. Ship of Fools made Porter wealthy for the first time in her life. The 1963 movie further increased her fortune. In 1966, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, which included "Holiday," won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1970, The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings was released. Her last work was "The Never-Ending Wrong," an essay on the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. On September 18, 1980, Porter died at the age of ninety.