Katherine Anne Porter

After her mother's death, Porter's grandmother Catherine Anne Porter raised the children in Kyle until 1901. At sixteen Katherine Anne married John Henry Koontz; the marriage ended in 1915. In Denver, working for the Rocky Mountain News, she nearly died of influenza. In New York she ghostwrote My Chinese Marriage. Some of her most important stories, among them Noon Wine, Old Mortality and The Grave, are set in Central Texas. In 1939 she lost the first Texas Institute of Letters award to J. Frank Dobie, and she left her papers to the University of Maryland.

What the plaque says

(May 15, 1890-September 18, 1980) Born Callie Russell Porter in Indian Creek, Katherine Anne Porter moved to Hays County with her family following her mother's death in 1892. She left Texas in 1915 and worked as an actress, teacher, reporter, and publicist in such places as Chicago, Denver, Mexico, and New York. Her first book of short stories was published in 1930. Her acclaimed 1962 novel "Ship of Fools", was followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter" in 1965. Upon her death in 1980, her ashes were buried next to her mother's grave in Indian Creek Cemetery. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Brownwood State Park — 16 mi
  A CCC park on a reservoir that filled in a single flood before its dam was done, with stone cabins, a hilltop dance pavilion and a grand staircase climbed by dancers arriving by boat.

More markers nearby

• Prisoners of War at Camp Bowie — 4.2 mi
• Site of World War II Camp Bowie — 4.3 mi
• Robert E. Howard — 5.7 mi
• Charlie Webb and John Wesley Hardin — 5.9 mi