Esoteric and enigmatic, this jeweler's daughter excelled at many arts, but by the time she was a teenager she had suffered from repeated serious illnesses. Her success at writing came in 1940, after a failed marriage, with publication of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Shortly after publication McCullers suffered the first of many strokes. In 1941 Reflections in a Golden Eye was published, and she remarried Reeves McCullers, her ex-husband in 1945. Two years later she was again devastated by strokes, leaving her partially disabled. After this time she suffered numerous diseases, including breast cancer in 1962. Her death in 1967 came six weeks after her last stroke.

Probably her most acclaimed work is The Member of the Wedding (1946), which became a film starring Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, and Brandon de Wilde in 1952.