1851 - 1904

American novelist and short story writer. Born Katherine O'Flaherty.

Her Creole tales (Bayou Folk (1894), A Night in Acadie (1897)) established her as a leading author. But after her novel The Awakening (1899) was attacked for its honest portrayal of a woman's unrepentant sexual passion, she virtually stopped publishing and was not rediscovered until the 1960s.