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Carson McCullers

Long before Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk were exploring the outcasts and misfits of Southern Gothic, Carson McCullers was perfecting the genre. In fact, any given character in any given season of American Horror Story could have been ripped from McCullers’ work. She wrote from a place of deeply personal pain and rejection, and McCullers always strived to be kind and inclusive with her writing.

McCullers grew up in my hometown  of Columbus, Georgia, but quickly became suffocated by its dogma, traditions and conservative societal rules. She was deeply disheartened over segregation and she famously refused to allow her books in the local library while it still disallowed black patrons inside. She wrote, sometimes in intriguing allegory and sometimes in overt criticism, of the staunch ways of the old South, and soon fled north to fuel her creative juices.

She married a local soldier, Reeves McCullers, but she could never really capture the domestic bliss of marriage, and she and Reeves split up in the 1940s. Meanwhile, in the big city, McCullers befriended literary greats like Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Surrounded by creativity, she wrote prolifically and poetically about the human condition and the effect of love on the spirit.

She never remarried after Reeves, but both she and her husband pursued same sex relationships long after their split, remaining friends until the very end. She is rumored to have had relationships with Gypsy Rose Lee, Kathrine Anne Porter and her longtime friend and biographer Virginia Spencer Carr.

Today, her legacy is that of harsh truth, tempered with gentle invention and a softness of character. She may have left the South disillusioned with its intractability, but the South has since embraced her as one of its most beloved writers.