<b>The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin</b>&nbsp;-&nbsp;<b>Kate Chopin</b>&nbsp;was an American author of&nbsp;short stories&nbsp;and&nbsp;novels&nbsp;based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century&nbsp;feminist&nbsp;authors of&nbsp;Southern&nbsp;or Catholic background, such as&nbsp;Zelda Fitzgerald, and is one of the most frequently read and recognized writers of&nbsp;Louisiana Creole&nbsp;heritage.<br /><br />She is best known today for her 1899 novel&nbsp;<i>The Awakening</i>.<br />Of maternal French and paternal Irish descent, Chopin was born in&nbsp;St. Louis, Missouri. She married and moved with her husband to&nbsp;New Orleans. They later lived in the country in&nbsp;Cloutierville, Louisiana. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in such national magazines as&nbsp;<i>Atlantic Monthly</i>,&nbsp;<i>Vogue</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Century Magazine</i>, and&nbsp;<i>The Youth&#39;s Companion.</i>&nbsp;Her stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics.<br /><br />Her major works were two short story collections and two novels. The collections are&nbsp;<i>Bayou Folk</i>&nbsp;(1894) and&nbsp;<i>A Night in Acadie</i>&nbsp;(1897). Her important short stories included &quot;D&eacute;sir&eacute;e&#39;s Baby&quot; (1893), a tale of&nbsp;miscegenation&nbsp;in&nbsp;antebellum&nbsp;Louisiana, &quot;The Story of an Hour&quot; (1894), and &quot;The Storm&quot; (1898). &quot;The Storm&quot; is a sequel to &quot;At the Cadian Ball,&quot; which appeared in her first collection of short stories,&nbsp;<i>Bayou Folk.</i><br /><br />Chopin also wrote two novels:&nbsp;<i>At Fault</i>&nbsp;(1890) and&nbsp;<i>The Awakening</i>&nbsp;(1899), which are set in&nbsp;New Orleans&nbsp;and&nbsp;Grand Isle, respectively. The characters in her stories are usually residents of&nbsp;Louisiana, and many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Many of her works are set in&nbsp;Natchitoches&nbsp;in north-central Louisiana, a region where she lived.