Born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia on February 19, 1917, the author-to-be spent her childhood and teenage years in the town of her birth. After graduating from Columbus High School, the aspiring author moved to New York City. In 1937 she married James Reeves McCullers, and at the age of 23 published her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940). This novel established McCullers as an author, and she continued to write, completing three other novels and a collection of short stories: Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), The Member of the Wedding (1946), The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951), and Clock Without Hands (1961). Her other works include a play, The Square Root of Wonderful. McCullers, who suffered a series of three strokes which eventually left her partially paralyzed, died in Nyack, New York on September 29, 1967.