Carson McCullers was an American writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and poetry.

Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which enjoyed critical success, explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the U.S. South. Her other novels have similar themes and most are set in the deep South. The novels, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and The Member of the Wedding followed, all three were produced in film versions. Other written works include Clock Without Hands, a collection of short fiction The Ballad of the Sad Café, Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig, a collection of poems, and her play The Square Root of Wonderful.

Posthumous works include the stories, articles and verse in The Mortgaged Heart, edited by her sister Rita and Illumination and Night Glare, her unfinished autobiography.