Born: 12 October 1908, United States
Died: 28 April 1997
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Ann Lane
African-American writer Ann Petry’s extensive bibliography includes journalism, novels, children’s books and short stories, as well as a biography of Harriet Tubman. Her first novel, The Street (1946), was the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies.
Although she earned a Ph.G. degree from the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy and worked in her family’s pharmacy in her 20s, she later moved to New York after she married in 1938. She began working as a journalist for The Amsterdam News (1938-1941) and The People’s Voice (1941-1944) as well as publishing stories in The Crisis, Phylon and other media. From 1944 to 1946, she studied creative writing at Columbia University while working in an after-school program at Harlem’s P.S. 10.
Having grown up in a small town where she was one of few African-Americans – the only one in her high school graduating class, for example – living in New York City opened her eyes to the experiences of many African-Americans at this time. Her daughter, Liz, would later tell The Washington Post that “her way of dealing with the problem was to write (The Street), which maybe was something that people who had grown up in Harlem couldn’t do.”
Petry was also a member of the American Negro Theater, appearing in productions like On Striver’s Row. She went on to lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Miami University and Suffolk University, and was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.