KAY BOYLE

Born in St. Paul , Minnesota , Boyle studied architecture at Parson's School of Fine and Applied Arts in New York and elsewhere, took courses at Columbia , and studied violin briefly at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She moved to France with her husband the following year, and she lived mostly in France from 1923 to 1941, where she was well known among the American expatriate community.

In Paris , she became active in the avant-garde artist and writers community and signed the famous "Revolution of the Word" manifesto in Eugene Jolas' magazine Transition. Several of her books were published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including Short Stories, Wedding Day and Other Stories, and the novel Plagued by the Nightingale. During the 30’s, Boyle married again, and lived not only in France but also in Austria and England . Two lyrical novels, Year Before Last and My Next Bride draw on her own experience to assert a woman's right to sexual freedom and artistic independence. In 1936 she published Death of a Man, a novel that attacked Nazism before most Americans were aware it was a problem. The following year she wrote A Communication to Nancy Cunard. In the 40’s a series of novels about the German occupation of France and the French resistance to the Nazis followed: Primer for Combat, Avalanche, and A Frenchman Must Die. In 1947 Boyle moved to Germany , to serve as a European correspondent for The New Yorker. Her writing continued with The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Germany During the Occupation, and Generation Without Farewell. In 1963, she moved to San Francisco and began teaching at San Francisco State University . Once there, she wrote, Being Geniuses Together and The Underground Woman.

Altogether, she published ten novels, half a dozen short novels and numerous short story collections, three children's books, along with essays and several volumes of poetry.

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