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Maryat Lee, born Mary Attaway Lee in Covington, Kentucky, is typically remembered for three things: her relationship with famed author Flannery O’Connor, pioneering street theater in Harlem through the Salt and Latin Theater (SALT), and founding EcoTheater, an indigenous theater that created plays out of oral histories in Appalachia and used non-actors in its productions.

However, despite the overwhelming acknowledgement of Lee’s impact on theater and the arts, an untapped well of research can be found within the detailed and deeply personal journals she kept from 1936 until her death in 1989. Save for a lack of writing in the 1940s, Lee kept up her diaristic practices religiously and took it just as seriously as her work in theater.

A large part of her journaling details her tumultuous business and romantic relationship with Fran Belin, a Brooklyn-native pianist and photographer who left New York City with Lee to create The Women’s Farm in Powley’s Creek, West Virginia, in 1973. While The Women’s Farm would go on to be overshadowed by the creation of EcoTheater some years later, it aimed to be a retreat for artists and intellectuals, primarily women and feminists. Some prominent visitors that Lee would write about included the “grandmother of Appalachian Studies” Helen Matthews Lewis; Paul and Nanine Dowling of the America the Beautiful Fund; music critic Howard Klein and realist painter Patricia Windrow as well as their two sons, Adam Klein and Moondi Klein; artist Maxi Cohen; writers and activists Toni Cade Bambara and Sonia Sanchez; playwright Clare Coss; and theater producer Susan Richardson.

Visitors of The Women’s Farm often became long-time friends (and sometimes romantic partners) with Lee and Belin, who were involved in the feminist movement and often attended women’s workshops and events with people they had met through The Women’s Farm.

Throughout her journals, Lee’s descriptions of people are oftentimes frank and unforgiving, such as referring to writer James Dickey as “gross”, journalist Dorothy Day as “sunken and ravaged” and writer Hannah Tillich as “smug in a very European way”.

Lee also wrote about world events that interested her. On the day she found out that Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match in 1973, she expressed her excitement by scrawling “BILLIE JEAN WON!!” at the top of the page, starkly out of place surrounded by her otherwise contained penmanship.

Some pages are written in a variety of different inks, showcasing Lee’s tendency to return to old passages to provide updates, clarify issues, and include more detailed descriptions.

Apparent in all journals are the inclusion of materials she references in her writings: letters, newspaper clippings, cards, and other ephemeral material like bird feathers and pressed flowers. Occasionally, Lee would sketch scenes to accompany text.

If Lee could not immediately access her journals when the urge to write struck, she would record her thoughts on any nearby paper. This can be seen with a few pages torn from a spiral notebook that she must have scavenged and wrote on during a hospital stay, which she later stapled into her journal.

The surprising details found throughout Lee’s journals are numerous and showcase her deep inner life alongside the practical realities of the unconventional life she led, whether that be as an emerging playwright in Harlem, New York City or as a farmer in the countryside of Powley’s Creek, West Virginia.

Lee’s journals, as well as countless other materials related to her life and works, can be found and accessed in the Maryat Lee, Playwright, Papers at the West Virginia and Regional History Center.