have more time to write. This led to the publication of a number of stories, reviews, and articles in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Mercury, The Christian Century, and other magazines, especially Quaker publications. Nuhn had been reading the work of Ruth Suckow when, in August 1926, he visited her in Earlville, Iowa. Ruth kept eighty hives of bees in an apiary there while establishing herself as a writer. Dorothy Grant writes that Nuhn described their meeting when he helped to dedicate the Ruth Suckow Memorial Park in Earlville in 1982. He had driven to Earlville from Cedar Falls, they had a long afternoon of good conversation, and then they were invited to a chicken dinner at a neighbor’s house. They enjoyed discussing literature, among other topics. Rebecca Christian wrote a one-woman play about Ruth Suckow, called “Just Suppose,” and to prepare for it, read much of the correspondence of Suckow and Nuhn, now housed in the Special Collections of the University of Iowa’s library, where it fills 56 boxes. Christian wrote, “During this period (of bee keeping) a letter arrived from a young literary critic in Cedar Falls who asked for ‘disposition towards pilgrims visiting you: if or when you are at ‘home.’” She apparently said yes, because he drove his Model T to Earlville, beginning a relationship that lasted both of their lives. When they met, Ruth was 36 and Nuhn was 25: the age difference did not seem to bother him, but troubled her at first. They shared a love of cats, and Nuhn once playfully compared Ruth to his cat, Persephone, telling her that he wasn't afraid of her sharp claws: "...both of you have sharp claws, though neither of you use them much," Nuhn and Suckow continued their friendship in New York City, where he attended Columbia University graduate school. His interest in writing was encouraged by the publication of several stories in The American Mercury, edited by H. L. Mencken, in 1927-28. Marriage and travels Nuhn and Suckow were married in San Diego, California on March 11, 1929. Ruth wrote to her aunt, “We start out with several things in our disfavor, but a very great deal of love in our favor.” An observer said, “Ferner found an artist who could translate the Midwest, and in Ferner, Ruth found a critic who could understand the translation.” Rebecca Christian describes