Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes and are all set in the South.

McCullers's work is often described as Southern Gothic and indicative of her Southern roots. Critics also describe her writing and eccentric characters as universal in scope. Her stories have been adapted to stage and film. A stage adaptation of her novel The Member of the Wedding (1946), which captures a young girl's feelings at her brother's wedding, made a successful Broadway run in 1950–51.

She divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York, and in September 1937 married Reeves McCullers, an ex-soldier and aspiring writer. Reeves found some work in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they began their married life. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, she wrote The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in the Southern Gothic tradition.