Katya Alpert Gilden

Katya Alpert Gilden (c. 1919-1991) was a best-selling novelist who wrote with her husband Bert Gilden under the pen-name "K.B. Gilden". The couple produced two major novels, "Hurry Sundown" (1964), which was made into an Otto Preminger film in 1967, and "Between the Hills and the Sea" (1971), published the year of Bert's death.

Gilden was born in Bangor, Maine and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1935. While an undergraduate, she was the first woman to publish in the "Harvard Advocate", submitting a poem, and a story about a fight between a black and white boxer. [Obit. "Boston Globe", May 8, 1991] The themes of race, gender, and inequality would resurface in her later novels. "Hurry Sundown" is about black and white Southern sharecroppers, and "Between the Hills and the Sea" about factory workers and labor relations in the 1940s-50s. The Gildens considered themselves "novelist [s] of the world of work", and were heavily influenced by essays on proletarian fiction by György Lukács. [Tim Libretti, "Beyond False Promises: K.B. Gilden's "Between the Hills and the Sea" and the Rethinking of Working-Class Culture, Consciousness, and Activism" in "Woman's Studies Quarterly: Working Class Lives and Cultures", v. 26, nos. 1 & 2 (Summer/Spring 1998), pp. 159-179]

"Hurry Sundown" was a best-seller, but was largely panned by critics. One criticism of the book was its extreme length (1.046 pages). ["New York Times", Jan. 8, 1965] "Time" called it a "punch-card novel" because of its predictability ["Time", "Punch-Card Novel", Jan. 8, 1965] , and the "Chicago Tribune" called it "a novel lost in its own maze". ["Chicago Tribune", A Novel Lost in its Own Maze", Jan. 10, 1965] Nonetheless, the Gildens sold the movie rights to Paramount for an unprecedented $795,000.

Gilden lived the later part of her life in Cambridge, Massachusetts and died in Boston. She had three children. [Obit. "New York Times", May 8, 1991 [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2D61630F93BA35756C0A967958260 New York Times Obituary] ]

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