Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the transformation that Katherine Ames undergoes.

Over the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, and throughout the publication of more than thirty-five books, Kay Boyle became intensely interested in many different types and schools of writing. An important figure in the avant-garde literary movement that took place in Europe in the 1920s, Boyle once openly stated, "The writer expresses. He does not communicate." Over time, however, she came to reverse this opinion, ultimately believing that it was a writer's duty to share his or her most impassioned convictions with readers. Her writing style correspondingly widened from the experimental and highly personal to the more conventional as she sought to explore her social concerns about human relationships and...