But shortly before the book went to press, the McCullers estate told Shapland that she could not quote from the transcripts, telegrams, and certain letters. (McCullers’s identity as a lesbian had long been dismissed by many scholars.) Months later, she secured McCullers’s therapy transcripts, which support the fact that McCullers was a lesbian. Shapland started writing it after finding―in the Ransom Center Archives where she interned during graduate school―love letters between McCullers and another woman. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers describes Shapland and Carson McCullers’s coming-of-age stories as writers, lesbians, and chronically ill people. While I crave a follow-up called “The Case of the Missing Story of the Missing Cat,” a meta exploration of how she became a writer, her critically acclaimed debut book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers(Tin House) accomplishes that and more (sans feline). Jenn Shapland’s writing career began in the fourth grade when an acting company performed her award-winning mystery story, “The Case of the Missing Cat.” Unfortunately, she no longer has it.
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