Author: Katherine Anne Porter
Name: Lauren O’Neal
Date: 11/10/2010
She was born in India
Creek, Texas in 1890.
 She became self reliant at
an early age because she
lost her mother.
 She married John Henry
Koontz when she was 15
years old. This marriage
lasted 9 years.

She was born with the name Callie
Russell Porter.
 She was raised by her father and
paternal grandmother, Catharine Ann
Skaggs Porter.
 Porter's father always said that he was a
descendent of Daniel Boone.

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She got married multiple times.
1918-1921 She became involved in
revolutionary politics in Mexico
In 1926 she married her 2nd husband Ernest
Stock. Her third husband was Eugene Dove
Pressly.
He became the model for the character of
David Scott in “Ship of Fools.”
In 1938 she married her fourth husband,
Albert Erskine.
During her early twenties she
moved from Texas to Chicago and
back to Texas. She worked as an
actress and a singer.
 She died at the age of 90 in 1980


Katherine Anne Porter's
Poetry

Letters of Katherine
Anne Porter

Pale Horse, Pale Rider:
Three Short Novels

Ship of Fools

The Jilting of Granny
Weatherall
Influences
•Her Grandmother
•Shakespeare
•Living in Mexico
Joan Givner
 Harold Bloom
 Mark Busby
 George Hendrick

World War One
 World War Two
 The Great Depression

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They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of
gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often
did not."
"You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to
speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can
understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the
implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence."
"It is a man's world, and you men can have it."
"There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the
turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human
life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own
rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own."
"Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable
of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are
more than one-fourth fulfilled."
"A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or
later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not
afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind. You do not create a
style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being."

Digging post holes changed a woman.
Riding country roads in the winter when
women had their babies was another
thing: sitting up nights with sick horses
and sick children and hardly ever losing
one of them! John would see that in a
minute, that would be something he
could understand, she wouldn’t have to
explain anything!

It made her feel like rolling up her sleeves
and putting the whole place to rights
again. No matter if Cornelia was
determined to be everywhere at once,
there were a great many things left
undone on this place. She would start
tomorrow and do them. It was good to
be strong enough for everything, even if
all you made melted and changed.

This narrative is in no way structured into a
coherent, logical presentation of events. It
frequently jumps back into time to the main
characters' past experiences. During the
story she has numerous flashbacks to her
younger day. This happens while she is
talking to the doctor. All of this comes up
because her daughter Cornelia thinks that
she can’t hear or understand so she
whispers behind her back.
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Author, By. "Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist." Web. 10
Nov. 2010. <http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/429>.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/katherineanne-porter/about-katherine-anne-porter/686/
Katherine Anne Porter Life Stories, Books, & Links." Great Stories,
People, Books & Events in Literary History. Web. 12 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/katherine.anne.p
orter.asp#books_by>.
"Katherine Anne Porter." The Alamo Colleges - Homepage. Web.
12 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.alamo.edu/sac/english/mcquien/htmlfils/kaporter.
htm>.
"Katherine Anne Porter Biography - Life, Childhood, Children,
Story, Death, School, Mother, Young, Book, Old, Information,
Born, Siblings, House, Marriage, Year." Encyclopedia of World
Biography. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pe-Pu/Porter-KatherineAnne.html>.
When and where was Porter born?

India Creek, Texas in 1890

What year did she die?

1980

Name one thing that influenced Porter

Shakespeare, Living in Mexico, and her
Grandmother

Name one person that Porter influenced

Joan Givner, Harold Bloom, Mark Busby,
and George Hendrick

Name a major work of hers

Katherine Anne Porter's Poetry, Letters of
Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale
Rider: Three Short Novels, Ship of Fools,
and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall