Carson McCullers (née Lula Carson Smith; February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet known for her Southern Gothic works. Her début novel, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, was published when she was 23 years old and quickly became a bestseller. Other works include Reflections In A Golden Eye, The Member Of The Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and Clock Without Hands.
Themes in her work include isolation and loneliness, repressed or unspoken non-heterosexual identities, otherness in general, and Marxism. Regarding the last, McCullers, like many American intellectuals in the '30s, embraced Marxist views.
