Everything about Kay Boyle totally explained
Kay Boyle, born
February 19,
1902 in
St. Paul, Minnesota,
United States – died
December 27,
1992 in
Mill Valley, California, was an award-winning writer, educator, and political activist.
Early life
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle grew up in several cities but principally in
Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was a lawyer but her greatest influence came from her mother Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. As such, in later years, Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the
Vietnam War.
Kay Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in
New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and Family Life
That same year, she met and married a
French exchange student, Richard Brault, and moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in
Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she'd a daughter (born after Walsh had died of consumption).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to
Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she'd three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around
Montparnasse. Among her friends were
Harry and
Caresse Crosby and
Eugene and
Maria Jolas. In 1929 the Crosbys'
Black Sun Press published Boyle's first book of fiction titled
Short Stories. Kay Boyle also wrote for
transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two
O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled
Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of
Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. After having lived in
France,
Austria,
England, and in
Germany after
World War II, Boyle returned to the United States. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she'd two children.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early
1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by
Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the
U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for
The New Yorker, a post she'd held for six years. She was
blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960's, Boyle and her husband lived in
Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the
State Department and posted to
Iran, but died shortly thereafter.
Following her husband's death in 1962, Boyle accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of
San Francisco State College where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In her later years, she became an active supporter of
Amnesty International and worked for the
NAACP.
Boyle died at a California seniors home in 1992.
In all, Kay Boyle published more than 40 books, including 14 novels, eight volumes of
poetry, 11 collections of short fiction, three children's books, French to English translations and essays. Most of her papers and manuscripts are in the Morris Library at
Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, Illinois. A comprehensive assessment of Boyle's life and work was published in 1986 titled
Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist by Sandra Whipple Spanier. In 1994 Joan Mellen published a voluminous biography of Kay Boyle,
Kay Boyle. Author of herself.
A member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, in addition to her two O. Henry Awards, she received two
Guggenheim Fellowships and was given a lifetime achievement award from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Bibliography
Novels
Poems
A Statement (1932)
A Glad Day (1938)
(1944)
Collected Poems (1962)
The Lost Dogs of Phnom Pehn (1968)
Testament for My Students and Other Poems (1970)
A Poem for February First (1975)
This Is Not a Letter and Other Poems (1985)
Collected Poems of Kay Boyle (1995)
Short stories
Short Stories (1929)
Wedding Day and Other Stories (1930)
The First Lover and Other Stories (1933)
The White Horses of Vienna (1935) winner of the O. Henry Award
The Astronomer's Wife (1936)
Defeat (1941), winner of the O. Henry Award
Thirty Stories (1946)
(1951)
Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart (1966)
Fifty Stories (1980)
Life Being the Best and Other Stories (1988)
Juvenile
The Youngest Camel (1939), revised edition published as (1959)
Pinky, the Cat Who Liked to Sleep (1966)
Pinky in Persia (1968)
Non-fiction
Relations & Complications. Being the Recollections of H.H. The Dayang Muda of Sarawak. (1929), Forew. by T.P. O'Connor. (Ghost-written)
(1962)
The Last Rim of The World, in "Why Work Series" editor Gordon Lish (1966)
Being Geniuses Together, 1920-1930 (1968) (with Robert McAlmon)
"Winter Night" and a conversation with the author in "New sounds in American fiction" editor Gordon Lish (1969)
The Long Walk at San Francisco State and Other Essays (1970)
Four Visions of America (1977) (with others)
Words That Must Somehow Be Said, Edited by Elizabeth Bell (1985)Further Information
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