Caroline Gordon was born today in writing history, October 6. Celebrate the author’s birthday by learning more about her life and contributions to literature. Aspiring writers should also use this opportunity as a writing exercise. Look for inspiration today in writing history.

Writing Prompts for Today In Writing: October 6

Please take this opportunity to learn more about Caroline Gordon and her contributions to writing. Her narratives and potential earned her high literary praise. She was a lightning rod for influential authors of her time. Perhaps, like all aspiring writers should aim to do, Gordon found inspiration and wisdom from her contemporaries. 

What led Caroline Gordon to be a writer? Where did the inspiration to tell her stories come from? And what helped the author create her unique writing style? Find inspiration about Gordon, learn more details about her life, and write!

Caroline Gordon Biography

Caroline Ferguson Gordon was born in Todd County, Kentucky, on October 6, 1895. Her father educated Caroline at his Clarksville Classical School for Boys in Tennessee. Later on, Gordon would attend Bethany College and graduate in 1916. Following graduation, Gordon worked as a writer for the Chattanooga Reporter, a newspaper out of Tennessee.

Gordon into the Writing World

Gordon would return home to Kentucky in 1924 and meet Allen Tate, a poet. The two would move to Greenwich Village, where they were wed on May 15, 1925. While in New York, Caroline Gordon’s magnetic ability to attract the literary talent of her generation began. Gordon and Tate would share a home with Hart Crane, a poet inspired by T.S. Eliot. In 1928, the couple would move to Europe, where they spent the next two years.

Caroline Gordon Literary Magnet

Gordon and Tate would return to the United States in 1930 and settle in Clarksville, Tennessee. In a home they called BenFolly, the couple would host a long list of literary titans, including Robert Lowell, F. Schott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, and Ford Madox Ford. These talented authors played a role in Caroline Gordon honing her writing and ideas. The most notable influence was Ford Madox Ford. He provided counsel and motivation for Caroline Cordon to publish her first novel.

Writing Career

Caroline Gordon’s first novel, Penhally, was published in 1931. During her early writing career, Gordon received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the O. Henry award for her short story Old Red. Her early fiction was influenced by the southern gothic writers of the time, many of whom she had entertained in her home.

Gordon was a friend and mentor to writers Walker Percy, Brainard Cheney, and Flannery O’Connor. Cheney considered Gordon his ‘literary mentor,’ noting her teaching him to write literature from his previous job as a crime reporter. Caroline Gordon was not only a literary learner but a writing teacher and inspiration.

Later Life and Death

Gordon would continue to write throughout her life, completing nine more novels. Caroline Gordon would briefly divorce Allen Tate twice throughout their lifetimes before remarrying. The first was in 1945, but the couple remarried the following year. Again in 1959, Gordon divorced Tate on the grounds of desertion. 

The couple remarried four days later and remained wed until he died in 1979. Gordon moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. On March 1, 1981, she suffered a stroke and died six weeks later, following surgery. She was 85.

Caroline Gordon’s Writing Style, Honed Among Greats

Caroline Gordon possessed an ability to observe and learn. She was a prolific writer in her own right. Still, her journalistic ability to gain insight from the literary greats of her time is a trait all aspiring writers should learn. Throughout her life, she made a name for herself a proved her writing talents. Gordon also maintained an ability to guide aspiring writers to hone their writing.

Notable Caroline Gordon Books

Penhally (1931)

Aleck Maury, Sportsman (1934)

None Shall Look Back (1937)

The Garden of Adonis (1937)

Green Centuries (1941)

The Women on the Porch (1944)

The Forest of the South (1945)

The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story (with Allen Tate) (1950)

The Strange Children (1951)

The Malefactors (1956)

A Good Soldier: A Key to the Novels of Ford Madox Ford (1957)

How to Read a Novel (1957)

Old Red and Other Stories (1963)

The Glory of Hera (1972)

The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon (1981)

Today in Writing: October 6 – Daily Writing Exercise

Now that you have done some reading, it is time to write. Aspiring writers should look to the stories from Today in Writing: October 6 and Caroline Gordon’s life for their own inspiration. Check the highlights of her life to spark an idea, or read her novels to get a sense of her writing style. 

Find a topic from and freewrite for 10 minutes. Caroline Gordon surrounded herself with literary titans and learned from their writing. In the author’s own words: “There are other great writers who are not read properly in their own day for the reason, perhaps, that their readers are not yet born. What they have to say to their own generation is said so at cross-purposes and with such apparent irrelevance that it is not understood. They are, as it were, giants who tower above their own age to cast their shadows across the next.”

Don’t let any opportunity to write go to waste. Aspiring writers: Practice your writing today. Celebrate Today in Writing History October 6.