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Allen, Dr. Marion Barber, Irene Dysart Baugh, Merle Chason Bearden, Mary Elizabeth Anderson Bogle, Frances Foster Bowen, Catherine J. Boyce, Virginia B. Brannan, Anne Shipman Brennan, Nona Quinn Buntts, Dorothy Channell, Anna Logan Drvaric, Elizabeth Stokes Dunaway, Gertrude Ehr-lich, Charmet Garrett, Elizabeth Wansley Gazdick, Zell Barnes Grant, Katherine D. Groves, Sunny Hancock Hammond, Mary Ann Hamrick, Lou Ann Hardigne, Elizabeth Harrington, Mary Emma Henderson, Harriet T. Hendricks, Martha Johnson, Ann Fitzpatrick Klein, Helen Matthews Lewis, Ann Davis Lomax, Bee McCormack, Imogene McCue, Dr. Mary McEver, L. Leotus Morrison, Marion Peterman Page, Ana Pinkston Phillips, Jane Garrett Phillips, Frances Lane Poole, Frances Rackley, Jeanne Peterson Robinson, Peggy George Sammons, Carol Simpson, Bette Rhodes Smith, Jane Strozier Smith, Karen Owens Smith, Betty Spence, Marylee Kell Tillman, Elizabeth Williams Turner, Gladys Baldwin Wallace, Dorothy L. Warthen, Ophelia Page Wilkes, Aileen T. Williams, Jane Sparks Willingham, and Joan DeWitt Yoe.

Helping me to navigate the various manuscripts, archives, and records at the University of Iowa during my stay in Iowa City were Sidney F. Huttner, head of Special Collections; David McCartney, university archivist; Sarah Harris, registrar; and Margaret Lillard, Alumni Association records supervisor. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I was greatly helped by its human memory bank, Connie Brothers; Marilynne Robinson, acting director in 2005, connected me with Norma Hodges, who met with me and shared memories of being in the Workshop with O’Connor. Most helpful in giving me a sense of the Workshop at the time, in a volley of e-mails, was James B. Hall. Others kindly agreeing to communicate with me were Eugene Brown, Charles Embree, Bernie Halperin, Dr. James R. McConkey, W. D. Snodgrass, Mary Mudge Wiatt, Mel Wolfson, and Robert R. Yackshaw. Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton not only recalled memories of O’Connor at Currier House, but sent along photographs of her housemate. Surprise sources were the writer-photographer John Gruen, and his wife, the painter Jane Wilson, who had also been friends of the subject of my last biography, Frank O’Hara.

I would have been happy under any circumstances for the chance to spend two weeks at Yaddo on a 2005 summer residency, but especially so as I worked during the time on researching O’Connor’s own 1948–49 stay. I am thankful to the president of Yaddo, Elaina Richardson; and to the source of much archival information, Lesley M. Leduc, public affairs coordinator. For direction in finding my way through the Yaddo Records at the New York Public Library, I relied on the archivist Ben Alexander, who later sent me his dissertation, Yaddo: A Creative History, and Micki McGee, curator of the October 2008 Yaddo exhibition at the library. Sharing with me their memories of O’Connor at Yaddo were Frederick Morton and Jim Shannon, son of the late Jim and Nellie Shannon. Most incisive and illuminating about O’Connor at Yaddo and in Manhattan, as well about as her early writings and friendship with Robert Lowell, was the late Elizabeth Hardwick, whom I interviewed in her apartment in the fall of 2003. I wish to thank Saskia Hamilton, too, for advice in exploring Lowell’s correspondence.

My extensive afternoon-long interview and several subsequent phone conversations with the late Robert Giroux were enormously helpful, not only for his memories of O’Connor’s arrival in New York City in 1949, but for his perceptions about her writing and publishing throughout her lifetime. When in doubt, I found that I could turn to the transcript of his interview for wise and judicious opinions on many a topic. Janet August and Amy Atamian, the current owners of the Fitzgeralds’ home at Seventy Acre Road, in Redding, Connecticut, showed great hospitality in allowing me to visit one Saturday afternoon in January 2007. They also introduced me to knowledgeable experts on the history of the area: Kay Abels, Ridgefield Historical Society; Brent Colley, Ridgefield online historian; Dan Cruson,