Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, poet, and political activist. Her 1962 novel, Ship of Fools, was the best-selling novel in America that year, but it was her short stories that received much more critical acclaim. In 1966, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter.

Porter is known for her penetrating insight, often exploring dark themes such as betrayal, death, and the origin of human evil.