Kay Boyle

by Joan Mellen

In her long, prolific, and tumultuous career, Kay Boyle (1902-92) published more than thirty volumes of fiction and poetry to awards and acclamations, always mining a rich vein of autobiography and innovation. Her reputation, however, has only recently begun to reemerge from the long shadow cast over it by her struggle against McCarthyism, returning to American letters some of the most vigorous writing of this century. In Joan Mellen's groundbreaking and provocative biography of Kay Boyle - the first ever - the full sweep of her remarkable life is revealed. As the golden girl of expatriate Paris, Kay Boyle included among her friends James Joyce, Hart Crane, Marcel Duchamp, Picabia, Brancusi, and Archibald MacLeish. A literary figure in her own right, she became one of the most important contributors to the seminal magazine transition, virtually invented what came to be known as The New Yorker story, and was awarded two O. Henry Prizes for her short fiction. Kay Boyle took lovers, bore