Margaret Boylen

Margaret Currier Boylen (January 12, 1921 – May 21, 1967) was an American novelist. A 1958 Guggenheim Fellow, she wrote three novels: Crow Field (1946), The Marble Orchard (1956), and A Moveable Feast (1961).

Margaret Currier was born on January 12, 1921, in Bozeman, Montana, to Bernice (née Chambers) and Edwin Lovejoy Currier.^[1] She and her three siblings were raised in Shenandoah, Iowa, where her mother worked at KMA as a "radio homemaker".^[2] After attending high school in her native Shenandoah.^[3] as well as two summers at Cummington School of the Arts in 1938 and 1939, she obtained her BA from Grinnell College in 1940.^[4]

On December 30, 1940, she married Alfred W. Boylen, a stage lighting designer whom she met while he worked as a teacher in Grinnell.^[3][5] They worked at Chekhov Theatre Studio in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and she briefly worked at Reuters as a foreign news editor.^[3]

Boylen was the author of three novels.^[5] In March 1947,^[6] she published her first novel, Crow Field, a mystery about the disappearance of a theater company's designer.^[7] She published another novel in 1956:^[8] The Marble Orchard, about a blind woman who regains her eyesight shortly before her grandmother's burial.^[7] Her third and final novel, A Moveable Feas, focuses on five orphaned siblings who become local celebrities in their hometown.^[7] In 1957, she received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in literature.^[9][4] In 1958, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative fiction writing.^[10][4]

Boylen was a Democratic voter and a Protestant.^[1] At the time of her death, she lived in Greenwich Village.^[5]

Boylen died from myocardial infarction in her home on May 21, 1967; she was 46.^[5]

• Crow Field (1946)^{[11][12][13][14][15][16]}
• The Marble Orchard (1956)^{[17][18][19][20][21][22][3][23][24][25]}
• A Moveable Feast (1961)^{[26][27][28][29][30]}