A Writer's War on Fascism: Kay Boyle in Europe and America, 1933-1953

FAIN: FT-270353-20

Anne Boyd Rioux
University of New Orleans (New Orleans, LA 70148-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book on the life and work of American fiction writer Kay Boyle (1902–1992).

This book will tell the story of how the American writer Kay Boyle (1902-1992) left behind modernism’s “art for art’s sake” to embrace a responsibility to document the injustices of her time. Although now largely forgotten, Boyle was among the foremost chroniclers of the twentieth century's darkest days, documenting and analyzing in her fiction the rise of Nazism in Austria in the mid-1930s, the fall of France and the internment of innocent refugees during WWII, and America's occupation of post-war Germany, which still struggled to free itself from fascism. Boyle’s fiction in the 1930s-1940s won her two O. Henry Awards for best story of the year and a contract with The New Yorker that was severed in 1953 when she was erroneously accused of being a Communist. This book will illuminate Boyle’s considerable contributions to international modernism and anti-fascist literature. Most importantly, Kay Boyle’s life and work can help us look more closely at the troubling times we now confront.