Ann Petry
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| Author of one of the first novels to address black women's experiences in terms of race, class, and gender. Petry's novel, The Street, published in 1946, was the first book by an African-American woman to sell over one million copies.
Petry was born and raised in Old Saybrook, where she lived most of her life. Her father was a pharmacist; her mother, Bertha James Lane, ran a business called "Beautiful Linens for Beautiful Homes." Petry graduated from the Connecticut College of Pharmacy and worked in the family's two drugstores. In 1938, after marrying George Petry, she moved to New York City , where she began writing short stories and worked for the Harlem Amsterdam News. By 1941, she was covering general news stories and editing the women's pages of the People's Voice in Harlem . Her first published story appeared in 1943 in the Crisis, a magazine published monthly by the NAACP. Subsequently, she began work on her first novel, The Street, which was published in 1946 and for which she received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. Petry published seven additional books, including two more novels, The Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1953); Miss Muriel and Other Stories; and a children's biography of Harriet Tubman. Petry was appointed visiting professor of English at the University of Hawaii (1944-45) and lectured widely throughout the United States . In 1947 she and her husband returned to Old Saybook, where they raised their one daughter. | |||||||||||
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