Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her only novel, Ship of Fools (1962), based on her reminiscences of a 1931 ocean cruise she had taken from Mexico to Germany, was the best-selling novel in America of the year, though her short stories received even more critical acclaim; in 1966 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. That ye ...