Born in California, her first novel,
Boston Adventure was a best-seller, earning her national acclaim. She wrote two more novels in her career, but her greatest medium was the short story: her works were published in The New Yorker and and various other literary magazines. It was a collection of these stories, published in 1969, that won her the Pulitzer Prize.
Stafford's personal life was no less turbulent than her writing. She had three failed marriages, all to prominent writers (Robert Lowell, Oliver Jensen, and A. J. Liebling), and she suffered from alcoholism and depression, which eventually led to a nervous breakdown. She died in White Plains, New York in 1979.
