Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, in 1890. Her only formal schooling beyond grammar school was one year at a private Methodist school in San Antonio. She worked as a journalist and a political activist as well as a writer.
Her short fiction includes Flowering Judas and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Her novel Ship of Fools (1962) was a bestseller. The Collected Stories (1965) won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. She died in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1980.