Sanora Babb

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Sanora Louise Babb (April 21, 1907 – December 31, 2005) was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor known for her realistic portrayal of life during the Great Depression era. Eight of her books, including novels, a memoir, short story collections, and a volume of poetry, were published. After her death, she was featured in the Ken Burns 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl. Her best known work, Whose Names Are Unknown (2004), received much critical acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Spur Award for the Best Western Novel and the 2005 PEN Center USA Literary Award for fiction. The novel had been written decades prior; John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath had been based on Babb's field notes from interviews of migrant camp families compiled for her own book. Her boss, camp manager Tom Collins, had asked her to provide a copy of her notes to Steinbeck, who dedicated his novel to his wife and to Collins, "who lived it," with no attribution to Babb, whose...

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