Katharine Brush

Young Katharine did not attend college; directly after graduating from Centenary Collegiate Institute,[1] a New Jersey boarding school, at age 16, she began working as a movie columnist for the Boston Evening Traveller.

Brush's works were characterized by her narrative style and wit: she was praised for being a keen observer of contemporary American life, a writer skilled at presenting the foibles of relationships in a realistic manner.

[11] Her novel Young Man of Manhattan was named the 9th best-selling novel of 1930 by Publishers Weekly and later that year was made into a film starring Claudette Colbert, Norman Foster, and Ginger Rogers.

Her subsequent novel Red-Headed Woman was made into a film in 1932 starring Jean Harlow; playwright Anita Loos adapted the story for the screen.

[14] Ironically, Brush (whose nickname was "Kay") frequently told friends that despite being popular and critically acclaimed, she worried that after she died, she would probably be forgotten.

"[16] Her son Thomas, who became a newspaper executive and a patron of the arts,[17] donated the funding for a new library in her memory to the Loomis Chaffee School of Windsor, CT, in 1968.

It appeared on the 2005 Advanced Placement English Literature Exam; the story was originally published in The New Yorker's Fiction section on March 16, 1946.