Susan Glaspell

Susan Glaspell
Photo by Nickolas Muray, circa 1915
Born	Susan Keating Glaspell (1876-07-01)July 1, 1876 Davenport, Iowa
Died	July 28, 1948(1948-07-28) (aged 72) Provincetown, Massachusetts
Education	Davenport High School Drake University University of Chicago
Notable works	Alison's House Trifles ("A Jury of Her Peers")
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1931)
Spouse	Norman Matson (1925–32) George Cram Cook (1913–24†)
Signature

Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 28, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. With her husband George Cram Cook she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company. During the Great Depression she served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.

A prolific writer, Glaspell is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories and one biography. Often set in her native Midwest, these semi-autobiographical tales typically explore contemporary social issues, such as gender, ethics and dissent, while featuring deep, sympathetic characters who make principled stands.

A best-selling author in her own time, Glaspell's stories fell out of print after her death, during which time she was remembered primarily for discovering Eugene O'Neill. Critical reassessment has led to renewed interest in her career, and she is today recognized as a pioneering feminist writer and America's first important modern female playwright. Her one-act play Trifles (1916) is frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theatre, though she remains, according to Britain's leading theatre critic Michael Billington, "American drama's best kept secret."

Susan Glaspell was born in 1876 to Elmer Glaspell, a hay farmer, and Alice Keating, a public school teacher. She was raised on a rural homestead just below the bluffs of the Mississippi River along the western edge of Davenport, Iowa, on property bought from the US Government by her great-grandfather following the Black Hawk Purchase. Having a fairly conservative upbringing, "Susie" was remembered as "a precocious child" who would often rescue stray animals. With the family farm increasingly surrounded by suburban development, Glaspell's worldview was shaped by the pioneer tales of her grandmother, who told of regular visits by Indians to the farm in the years before Iowa statehood. Growing up directly across the river from Black Hawk's ancestral village, Glaspell was also influenced by the Sauk leader's autiobiography, who wrote that Americans should be worthy inheritors of the land. During the Panic of 1893, the farm was sold and Glaspell moved with her family into the city.