Secretly she wrote short stories during high school and college--two years (1924-1926) at Berea College and two years at the University of Louisville, where she received a B.S. degree in 1930. Two years of teaching after graduation persuaded Arnow that the profession was not for her. She quit and decided to devote more of her time and energy to writing. In 1934, at twenty-six, she scandalized her family by moving to a furnished room near the main library in Cincinnati, where she could read the "great novels" and try to write fiction. She supported herself with odd jobs and worked for the Federal Writers' Project. Her first publications, "A Mess of Pork" and "Marigolds and Mules," were short stories that appeared in 1935 in the little magazines of the 1930s. Written in terse, evocative prose revealing a perfectly attuned eye and ear, both stories demonstrate the skill at characterization and at depicting shocking violence that distinguish her later novels. National recognition came in winter 1936 when the prestigious
Southern Review published "The Washerwoman's Day," a story that foreshadows
Hunter's Horn (1949) and
The Dollmaker in its searing criticism of narrow piousness.
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