Kate Chopin (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an America author of short stories and novels considered as a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th. She was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis to a successful Irish immigrant father and a mother from the French community.  At age 5 her father died and she was raised by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She married Oscar Chopin at age 20, moved to New Orleans and gave birth to six children in the course of nine years. Her husband’s cotton brokerage failed in 1879, forcing a move to Natchitoches Parish to manage plantations. He died in 1892, deeply in debt, and after two years of trying to manage Kate moved back in with her mother in St. Louis. She began writing articles and stories to pull herself out of depression and became quite successful, publishing in the newspaper and in literary magazines. She had lived in several different cultures – Irish, French, Cajun, and Creole – and concentrated on women as strong individuals with wants and needs struggling to find identity within the strictures of 19th century Southern and Catholic cultures. Her second novel, The Awakening, was ahead of its time in addressing uncomfortable subjects and not well received, but is now considered a classic. She died in 1904 after suffering a brain hemorrhage at the St. Louis World’s Fair.