The Resume

(February 19, 1902-December 27, 1992)
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota
Wrote the novels ‘Plagued by the Nightingale’ (1931), ‘Death of a Man’ (1936), ‘Primer for Combat’ (1942), ‘A Frenchman Must Die’ (1946), ‘The Seagull on the Step’ (1955), ‘Generation Without Farewell’ (1960), ‘The Underground Woman’ (1975), and ‘Winter Night’ (1993)
Short story collections include ‘Wedding Day and Other Stories’ (1930), ‘The White Horses of Vienna’ (1935), ‘Defeat’ (1941), ‘The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Postwar Germany’ (1951), and ‘Fifty Stories’ (1980)
Poetry collections include ‘A Statement’ (1932), ‘American Citizen: Naturalized in Leadville’ (1944), ‘Testament for My Students and Other Poems’ (1970), and ‘This Is Not a Letter and Other Poems’ (1985)

Why she might be annoying:

She was slow at learning to read.
During her marriage to exchange student Richard Brault, she had a daughter out of wedlock with magazine editor Ernest Walsh
She lived with second husband Lawrence Vail for three years while she was married to Brault and Vail was married to Peggy Guggenheim.
She frequently dumped her children on others whenever raising them interfered with her writing.
Poet Robert McAlmon said, ‘Come hell or high water, Kay had to romanticize every situation.’

Why she might not be annoying:

In kindergarten, she was locked in a cloakroom by her classmates.
William Carlos Williams said that her poetry picked up where Emily Dickinson left off.
She won two O. Henry Awards for her short stories.
The Los Angeles Times noted, ‘Boyle was among the first writers to treat homosexuality as a natural variation on the human theme.’
She and her third husband, Baron Joseph von Franckenstein, were blacklisted during the McCarthy era over their liberal politics.
The State Department officially cleared her and her husband of charges of being a security risk (1957)/
She was arrested twice for protesting the Vietnam War (1967).

Credit: C. Fishel

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• 20th Century Poets
• Blacklisted
• Breeders [Have 5 or More Kids] (Ranked: 6)
• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 76]
• Husband Thieves
• I Attended Bryn Mawr College
• I Died in 1992 (Ranked: 90)
• I Lived on a Commune
• I Mothered Children Out of Wedlock
• I was Estranged From My Child
• Look at Me, I Got a Microphone
• Poets
• Profiles 46751-47000 (Ranked: 46847)
• Women Who had Abortions

Year In Review:

For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 15 Votes: 86.67% Annoying
In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying