1932: As a senior in high school, she suffers from rheumatic fever, which is thought later to have contributed to her crippling strokes in life. She announces to her friend Helen Jackson that she has decided to become a writer instead of a concert pianist.
1933: Carson graduates from Columbus High School and begins to read the works of Dostoevski, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and O'Neill. She has begun writing plays (in which she casts her brother and sister), the first of which is called The Faucet. She writes her first story called Sucker, which she tries unsuccessfully to sell.
1934: Carson leaves Savannah, Georgia at age seventeen and travels to New York City, where she enrolls in creative writing courses at Columbia University.
1935: Carson meets James Reeves McCullers, Jr. through her friend Edwin Peacock.
1936: Her first published story, "Wunderkind," appears in Story magazine. She develops the idea for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter while recuperating from a serious illness.
1937: On September 20, Carson (age twenty) and Reeves (age twenty-four) are married in the home of mutual friends. They return to Charlotte, North Carolina and move into Reeves's apartment. Carson begins work on her first novel.
1939: Carson finishes her first novel in April and entitles it The Mute. She writes a second novel entitled Reflections in a Golden Eye. She begins conceiving the plot for The Member of the Wedding.
1940: On June 4, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (formerly called The Mute) is published by Houghton Mifflin.
1941: In February, Carson is stricken with impaired vision, stabbing head pains, and partial paralysis. She visits the Yaddo Artists' Colony in Saratoga Springs and meets Katherine Anne Porter and Newton Arvin. At Yaddo, she writes The Ballad of the Sad Café. She initiates divorce proceedings against Reeves. Her first published poem, "The Twisted Trinity," appears in Decision. She suffers her second major illness of the year with pleurisy, strep throat, and double pneumonia.
