Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia on February 19, 1917. Her mother was the granddaughter of a plantation owner and Confederate War hero. Her father was a well-to-do watchmaker and jeweler. From the age of five she took piano lessons, and at the age of 15 she received a typewriter from her father. Two years later she moved to New York to study piano at Juilliard School of Music, but never attended the school. She worked in menial jobs and devoted herself to writing. She studied creative writing at Columbia and New York universities and published in 1936 an autobiographical piece, 'Wunderkind'.

In 1935 she moved to North Carolina, and in 1937 she married a soldier and struggling writer, Reeves McCullers. But the marriage turned out to be unsuccessful. They both had homosexual relationships and separated in 1940. Carson McCullers moved to New York and five years later she remarried with Reeves McCullers. In 1943 she attempted suicide under depression. Reeves killed himself in a Paris hotel in 1953 with an overdose of sleeping pills. Carson McCullers suffered throughout her life from several illnesses - she had contracted rheumatic fever at the age of fifteen and a series of strokes left her a virtual invalid in her early 30's.

Carson McCuller is best know for 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' which was well-received when it was published in 1940.

She died in New York on September 29, 1967.