by

Lee R White

    Ruth Suckow Nuhn is one of the most important literary figures from Iowa. [1] She was born Ruth Suckow on August 6, 1892 in Hawarden, Iowa, the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. She and her sister, Emma, traveled across the state of Iowa as her father served in different communities as minister. [2] She attended three years of college at Grinnell, but did not complete her degree. She traveled around the country and worked the writers’ retreat, Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs. She also served on President Franklin Roosevelt’s Farm Tenancy Commission during the Depression. [3] 

    During the late teens and early 1920s, Suckow began writing and soon received recognition for her work. In 1929, she fell in love with and married Ferner Nuhn, a young literary critic from Cedar Falls. She was not interested in glamour or movie stars; she was only interested in writing about farmers and small town people, the types she encountered in her everyday life. [4] The titles of her books make that clear. They include Country People (1924), The Odyssey of a Nice Girl (1925), Iowa Interiors (1926), and The Folks (1934), among others. Most of her works were fiction but she also wrote some nonfiction pieces for journals. [5] Ruth and Ferner Nuhn moved to California in 1950 because of failing health. She died there on January 23, 1960. [6] In 1982, the community of Earlville, Iowa, one of the places Ruth Suckow had called home, dedicated a park to her on the site of her old residence. Her husband, Ferner Nuhn, led the dedication ceremony. [7]   

Footnotes

1. Cedar Falls Historical Society Archives: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2 (Raab Clippings): Johanna
    Raab's 100th birthday celebration. 

2. Mary Logan Sweet, Stoneware in Cedar Falls (Cedar Falls: Cedar Falls Historical Society,
    1984), 11. 

3. CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2 (Raab Clippings): Johanna Raab obituary in Waterloo
    Tribune, December 29, 1930 

4. CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2 (Raab Clippings): Johanna Raab's 100th birthday
    celebration. 

5. CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2: Johanna Raab obituary. 

6. Sweet, 14. 

7. Sweet, 15. 

8. Herbert Hake, 101 Stories of Cedar Falls (Cedar Falls: Cedar Falls Historical Society, 1977),
    30. 

9. CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2: Johanna Raab obituary. 
 
 
 

                                           Bibliography 

CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2: Raab Clippings: Johanna Raab's 100th birthday
    celebration. 

CFHSA: Series IV: Box 5: Folder 2: Raab Clippings, Johanna Raab obituary in Waterloo
    Tribune, December 29, 1930. 

Hake, Herbert, V. 101 Stories of Cedar Falls. Cedar Falls, Iowa: Cedar Falls Historical Society,
    1977. 

Sweet, Mary Logan. Stoneware in Cedar Falls. Cedar Falls, Iowa: Cedar Falls Historical Society,
    1984.