Fannie Hurst

Born in Hamilton, Ohio, and raised in St. Louis, Fannie Hurst studied at Washington University before moving to New York to pursue writing. Her early years there included a string of odd jobs, experiences that helped shape the working women, immigrants, and strivers who filled her fiction.

Hurst became one of the most commercially successful writers of her era, publishing novels, short stories, plays, and screenwriting work. Several of her best-known books, including Humoresque, Back Street, and Imitation of Life, were adapted for film, and her stories reached a huge popular audience even as critics sometimes debated her sentimental style.

She is also remembered for the way her fiction tackled social questions alongside romance and drama. Beyond her literary career, she was associated with causes including women's rights and civil rights, giving her work a public dimension that still makes her an interesting figure in American literary history.