June Hildegarde Flanner
June Hildegarde Flanner was an American poet and playwright born in Indianapolis, Indiana, as the youngest daughter of Frank Flanner and Mary Ellen Hockett Buchanan. Her upbringing was marked by the creative influence of her mother, a playwright and poet, and the tragic loss of her father, a mortician who died by suicide. Flanner pursued her education at prestigious institutions, including Sweet Briar College and the University of California at Berkeley, where she received accolades for her literary work. Throughout her career, she wrote poetry that often reflected the natural beauty of California, intertwining her experiences as a conservationist and gardener.
Flanner's literary contributions included several volumes of poetry and essays, with her work featured in notable publications such as The New Yorker. Her marriage to architect Frederick Monhoff in 1926 provided a stable foundation for her artistic endeavors, and they raised their son John in a home designed by Monhoff in Calistoga, California. After Monhoff's death in 1977, Flanner faced significant emotional challenges but continued to write, producing her last work, "Brief Cherishing: A Napa Valley Harvest," in 1985 before her passing in 1987. Flanner's legacy is characterized by her commitment to the environment and her role as an early feminist voice in literature.
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Subject Terms
June Hildegarde Flanner
Playwright
- Born: June 3, 1899
- Birthplace: Indianapolis, Indiana
- Died: May 27, 1987
- Place of death: Calistoga, California
Biography
June Hildegarde Flanner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the youngest of three daughters of Frank Flanner and Mary Ellen Hockett Buchanan. Her mother wrote plays and poems, and her father was a mortician and a real estate developer who committed suicide in 1912. Her two sisters were Janet Flanner, who under the name Genet wrote the “Letters from Paris” column for The New Yorker; and Mary Flanner, who was a songwriter and musician. Flanner attended Tudor Hall and then Shortridge High School in Indianapolis. After graduating with honors in 1917, she enrolled at Sweet Briar College and transferred to the University of California at Berkeley in 1919. While at Berkeley, she won the Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize for her poem “Young Girl.” Mansions, one of her early one-act plays, was staged at the Little Theater Society in Indianapolis and was well received. Flanner’s mother left Indianapolis and moved to Berkeley in 1922 to join her daughter. Their home was destroyed by fire just a year later, and Flanner later wrote an essay on its destruction for The New Yorker. In 1926, Flanner and her mother moved to Altadena, California.
After her 1926 marriage to Frederick Monhoff, an architect and illustrator, the couple stayed in Altadena. Flanner continued to write poetry and received the Guarantors Prize from Poetry, a magazine in which she published six poems. Monhoff he illustrated some of her books. The couple and their son John (born in 1942) later moved to a home designed by Monhoff in Calistoga, California, in the Napa Valley wine country. A regional writer, Flanner incorporated the California scenery into her poetry, which is saturated with natural imagery. By 1940 she had published half a dozen volumes of verse, and in 1941 New Directions featured her as the Poet of the Month. She and Monhoff were conservationists and gardeners, and many of her later writings involve those activities. Flanner was also an early environmentalist and feminist. When her husband died in 1977, Flanner was distraught and had problems coping with his loss, but two years later she published The Hearkening Eye. She lived for another ten years and remained active. Her last publication, Brief Cherishing: A Napa Valley Harvest, appeared in 1985, two years before her death from a heart attack.