Katherine Anne Porter, one of America’s most distinguished fiction writers, was born Callie Russell Porter in Indian Creek, Brown County, Texas. After her mother, Mary Alice Jones Porter, died in 1892, her father, Harrison Boone Porter, returned with the children to his native Hays County to live with his mother, Catherine Ann Skaggs Porter. Porter spent her childhood in Kyle and attended the public schools there. Following a brief failed marriage, she left Texas in 1915, went to Chicago, and, using the name she adopted from her grandmother, became a journalist. She traveled throughout the world and began her writing career. Her first book of short stories, "Flowering Judas and Other Stories," was published in 1930, and she later published "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" in 1939. Her novel "Ship of Fools" appeared in 1962, followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter" in 1965. In her later years she returned to Texas to visit her former homes, and after her death her ashes were interred next to her mother’s grave in Indian Creek Cemetery, according to her request.