Kay Boyle (February 19, 1902 – December 27, 1992) was an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and political activist.

Her work contributed significantly to modernist literature, and she was an active participant in the expatriate literary scene in Paris during the 1920s.

The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[2] Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati.

Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.

[3] During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse.

Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories.

A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women.

[3] After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.

[8][9] As a result, for the first time in history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.