Facts about Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton died at 45 years old
Born: November 9, 1928
Died: October 4, 1974 (suicide by asphyxiation)
Birthplace: Newton, Massachusetts, United States
Best known as: Confessional American poet of the 1960s and '70s
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Anne Sexton Biography
Name at birth: Anne Gray Harvey
Anne Sexton married at the age of 19, worked briefly as a model and then started a family. Sexton suffered from depression and had mental breakdowns and suicidal bouts after the births of her children and the deaths of her parents. In the late 1950s she began writing poetry as therapy and was soon "discovered" by the literary world for her unapologetically autobiographical poems. The recipient of many awards and grants, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for Live or Die. In 1974 she committed suicide.