Mary Karr is an accomplished memoirist, poet, essayist, and songwriter, who hails from East Texas. She was born on January 16, 1955, in Groves, a small town located in the Port Arthur region, known for its oil refineries and chemical plants. Karr's parents were J.P. and Charlie Marie (Moore) Karr, with her father working in an oil refinery and her mother being an amateur artist and business owner. In her memoirs, Karr refers to the town as "Leechfield."
Karr's writing career has seen the publication of several critically acclaimed works of fiction and poetry. However, she rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir, "The Liars' Club." This memoir delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, which was spent in a gritty, industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. Karr has said that she only took up the project of writing her personal history when her marriage fell apart, encouraged by her friend and author Tobias Wolff. She followed this book with another memoir, "Cherry," about her late adolescence and early womanhood, and a third memoir, "Lit," which details her journey from being a blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to an unlikely Catholic.
Karr thinks of herself primarily as a poet and has won several prestigious awards for her work. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry, including "Abacus," "The Devil's Tour," "Viper Rum," and "Sinners Welcome." Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.
Karr is a controversial figure in the American poetry establishment, thanks to her Pushcart-award winning essay, "Against Decoration." In this essay, Karr took a stand in favor of content over poetic style and argued that emotions need to be directly expressed, with clarity being a watch-word. She has been critical of well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren.
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer," was originally published in Poetry in 2005. In this essay, Karr tells of moving from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic and argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us. Karr's first memoir, "The Liars' Club," kick-started a memoir revolution and won nonfiction prizes from PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters. Her second memoir, "Cherry," and her most recent book, "Lit: A Memoir," have also been bestsellers and critical successes. Karr is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.