The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dawn Powell wrote novels about people like herself: outsiders who’d come to New York City in the early twentieth century to make a name for themselves. For a few years, those novels put her at the center of the city’s literary scene. Ernest Hemingway even called her his favorite living writer.

When she died of colon cancer in 1965, Powell donated her body to science. But then her books disappeared from shelves, and, unbeknownst to her family, her body went missing too.

This is episode five of The Unmarked Graveyard, a series untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. To hear more stories from Hart Island, subscribe to the Radio Diaries feed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Tapio from PRX
0:13.3	Celebrity graves are some of the most beloved places in the country.
0:17.9	Elvis Presley's burial site at Graceland draws more than a half million fans every year.
0:23.7	Fans leave red kisses on Marilyn Monroe's headstone in Los Angeles.
0:27.8	Jazz lovers trek to flushing queens to drape mardi gras beads on the grave of Louis Armstrong.
0:33.9	Are there aren't many celebrities buried at Heart Island?
0:44.2	This is the Unmarked Graveyard.
0:46.0	I'm Joe Richmond of Radio Diaries.
0:48.1	In each week we're untangling mysteries from America's largest public cemetery.
0:52.3	Neil Harris was last seen and him would New York on December 12th.
0:55.4	So many questions man.
0:56.6	So many questions.
0:57.6	You can't help but wonder what a life has been.
1:00.6	I never went back and I never looked well again.
1:06.8	On Heart Island there are no names on headstones, no plaques, just white posts with numbers on them.
1:13.0	Each one marks a trench containing about 150 coffins.
1:17.0	Embaried in one of those graves is a woman that Ernest Hemingway once called his favorite living writer.
1:23.5	Today episode five, the story of how a well-known writer's books and body disappeared.
1:31.0	Mutual presents offer!
1:35.2	Now we'd like you to meet our guest office for tonight.
1:37.9	The playwright, novelist and author of Happy Island, Ms. Dawn Powell.
1:43.5	Dawn Powell looked on society and she wrote it up.
	...

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