born Aug. 15, 1887, Kalamazoo, Mich., U.S.
died April 16, 1968, New York, N.Y.
U.S. novelist and short-story writer.
Ferber began her career at age 17 as a reporter in Wisconsin. Her early stories were collected in Emma McChesney & Co. (1915) and other volumes. She won critical acclaim for such novels as So Big (1924, Pulitzer Prize) and Show Boat (1926), which, with music by Jerome Kern , became a seminal work of the American musical theatre. Among her later works is the novel Giant (1952; film, 1956). Her works offer a compassionate, lively portrait of middle-class Midwestern America.