Jane Mayhall

She attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she majored in music, having entered as a talented composer, pianist and singer.

[1] With her husband, she was an active participant in New York's bohemian community starting in the 1950s, and became friendly with many of the prominent artists at the time.

[1] Her husband founded Eakins Press, which published art and literature, including some of Mayhall's works.

[2] Her debut novel Cousin to Human was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1960, telling the story of a girl growing up in Louisville.

Many of the works included in the book reflected her grief after the death of her husband, described by Andy Bruner of The New York Times as including "pain so private in its specificity that it threatens to repel the reader's empathy", while other pieces she "turns away from her sorrow and offers poems with philosophical insights into love and its inevitable loss".