“Doomed to ill health before the age of twenty, producing her best work before turning thirty, and dying [in 1967] at the age of fifty, she lived a life that was … the stuff of tragedy. That she managed to persevere in her singular exploration of the human soul was her victory.” Mary V. Dearborn
While Columbus native Carson McCullers’s literary stature continues to endure, her private life has remained enigmatic and largely unexamined. Now, with unprecedented access to the cache of materials that has surfaced in the past decade via the Columbus State University Archives and other sources, Mary V. Dearborn gives us and the world the first full picture of this brilliant, complex artist who was decades ahead of her time, a writer who understood—and captured—the heart and longing of the outcast.
The public is cordially invited to join the Georgia Center for the Book, in partnership with the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University and the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries, for a very special evening with biographer Mary V. Dearborn as she discusses her latest triumph Carson McCullers – A Life.
The event will be held in the Auditorium of the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road, on Tuesday April 23 at 6:30pm.
Admission is free. Reservations are recommended but not required and can be secured at this link.
Copies of Carson McCullers – A Life will be for sale via cash or Visa/MC. Ms. Dearborn will be available to sign copies after her presentation.
by Ed Keating.
“In this extraordinary biography, Dearborn brings Carson McCullers to life, revealing the debilitating physical ailments and near-constant psychic torment she had to conquer to produce four works of fiction imbued with some of the most emotionally sensitive poetic prose ever produced in American letters — a testament to why McCullers will live on as a unique and enduring artist.” The Washington Post
MARY V. DEARBORN holds a doctorate in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. She is the author of seven books—among them, Mistress of Modernism: The Life of Peggy Guggenheim and Ernest Hemingway. Dearborn has been a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Buckland, Massachusetts.
