Born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, circa 1908, Ann Lane Petry initially followed a family tradition of pharmaceutical practice, graduating from the college of pharmacy at the University of Connecticut and practicing for four years before moving to New York to pursue her literary and journalistic interests. After working for four years as an advertising salesperson and writer at the Amsterdam News New York bureau, she left to work as a reporter and woman's page editor for People's Voice, another New York publication.

Petry's first literary work was a short story published in 1943 in the Crisis, the official publication for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The following year, she participated in a project designed to study the effects of segregation on ghetto children. Following the publication of short stories in Phylon and the Crisis, Petry won a fellowship from Houghton Mifflin...