Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American writer.

Her parents belonged to the black minority of the small town in Connecticut where she was born. She graduated from Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven, in 1931. After getting married, in 1938, Ann moved to New York. There, she wrote for newspapers, such as The Amsterdam News and The People’s Voice, and published short stories.

Books

• The Street (novel), 1946;
• Country Place (novel), 1947;
• The Drugstore Cat (for children; illus. Susanne Suba), 1949;
• The Narrows (novel), 1953.
• Tituba of Salem Village (historical novel for children), 1955,
• Harriet Tubman: Conductor On The Underground Railroad (non-fiction), 1955;
  • published in London as The Girl Called Moses: The Story of Harriet Tubman, 1960.
• Legends of the Saints (illus. Anne Rockwell), 1970.
• Miss Muriel and Other Stories (story collection), 1971.

About her

• Blackness and value. Seeing double, de Lindon Barrett (1999)
• Black feminist criticism. Perspectives on Black women writers, de Barbara Christian (1997)
• Ann Petry’s short fiction, de Hazel Arnett Ervin e Hilary Holladay (2004)
• Black women in America, de Darlene Clark Hine (2005)
• Ann Petry, de Hilary Holladay (1996)
• Conjuring. Black women, fiction, and literary tradition, de Marjorie Pryse e Hortense J. Spillers (1985)
• Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women, 1860-1960, de Mary Helen Washington (1987)
• Modell für eine literarische Amerikakunde. Zugänge zum modernen schwarzamerikanischen Roman am Beispiel von Ann Petrys ‘The street’, James Baldwins ‘Go tell it on the mountain’ und Ralph Ellisons ‘Invisible man’, de Hans-Christoph Ramm (1989)
• Can Anything Beat White? A Black Family’s Letters, org. Elisabeth Petry (2005)
• At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry, de Elisabeth Petry (2008)
• Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature, by Jean-Christophe Cloutier (2019)