Katherine Anne Porter's uneasy relationship with her home 
state has become increasingly important to discussions of 
her life and work. Born in the now-gone community of Indian 
Creek and raised in Kyle, Porter is tied to Texas by three 
major events that occurred during her career.
    

In 1939 she expected to receive the Texas Institute of 
Letters Award for "Best Texas Book" only to be insulted 
when the award went to folklorist J. Frank Dobie. In the 
1950s she accepted an invitation to lecture at the 
University of Texas at Austin. During her visit to present 
that lecture, Porter began to believe that UT would build a 
library and name it after her, Texas' most famous literary 
daughter. But somehow she and UT President Harry Ransom 
miscommunicated, and Porter left her materials to the 
McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. Finally, in 
1976 she returned to Texas to receive recognition from Howard 
Payne University in Brownwood. On that trip she visited her 
mother's grave in the little cemetery at Indian Creek and 
decided that her remains on her death belonged beside her 
mother. So Porter finally returned to the state she had fled 
early in her life.
    

The essays in this collection are based primarily upon a 
symposium held in May 1998 at Southwest Texas State University 
in San Marcos. The collection includes essays by both scholars 
of Porter's work and of Texas literature. Some concern specific 
aspects of her life, such as her love for her birthday or her 
marital record. Others focus on the main elements of her 
relationship with Texas, while still others deal with specific 
works, often relating them to her Texas heritage. This important 
addition to Porter studies provides new insight into the ways 
in which Porter's Texas heritage shaped her life and her fiction.


_________________________________________________________

MARK BUSBY and DICK HEABERLIN are professors of English at 
Southwest Texas State University and co-editors of Texas Books 
in Review and Southwestern American Literature. Busby is director 
of the Center for the Study of the Southwest.