Born in family home at 53 West North Street in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, the second of three daughters of Roy King Powell and Hattie Sherman Powell. (In later years Powell habitually gives her birth year as 1897. Father, b. August 24, 1869, and mother, b. March 24, 1872, are both from the Mt. Gilead area. Father is of Welsh-Irish descent, while family tradition claims the mother's family, while mostly English, was also part Cherokee. Father works at series of jobs, including night manager of a local hotel and traveling salesman selling perfume, bedding, cherries, cookies, and coffins. Sister Mabel born July 11, 1895.)

Sister Phyllis born December 29 at 115 Cherry Street.

Mother dies, probably the result of a botched abortion, on December 6, in Shelby, Ohio.

Lives with series of relatives in central Ohio, while father is on the road as traveling salesman. (Later remembers: "a year of farm life with this or that aunt, life in small-town boarding houses, life with very prim strict relatives, to rougher life in the middle of little factory towns.")

Father marries Sabra Stearns, a former schoolteacher and cashier, in 1907. Family is reunited in a large farmhouse outside Cleveland. Stepmother proves to be abusive and is despised by Powell and her sisters, all of whom eventually run away from home. Becomes an early and precocious reader; favorite writers include Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Charles Dickens. Begins to write stories, plays, and sketches.

When stepmother burns some of her notebooks in the summer of 1910, runs off to live with her maternal aunt, Orpha May Sherman Steinbrueck, in Shelby. Aunt encourages Powell's literary ambitions. ("She gave me music lessons and thought I had genius and when I wrote crude little poems and stories, she cherished them, positive that I was another Jean Webster or Ella Wheeler Wilcox.") Attends Shelby High School, where she is made yearbook editor in her senior year.

With the financial assistance of her aunt, neighbors, and the school itself, matriculates in the fall of 1914 at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. Publishes stories in the Lake Erie Record, beginning in early 1915. Works during summer of 1915 as maid and waitress at a resort near the college; writes diary addressed to a fictional friend named "Mr. Woggs." Proves a barely adequate student at Lake Erie, but distinguishes herself in extracurricular activities, serving as editor of the Lake Erie Record in her senior year, writing and performing her own plays, and playing the part of Puck in an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Spends the summer of 1916 as a counselor at Camp Caho in Michigan. Works for a Shelby newspaper, the Globe, for most of the summer of 1917.

Graduates from Lake Erie College and moves to Pomfret, Connecticut, where she writes, works on a farm, and does some suffragist campaigning throughout the northeastern corner of the state. Studies seriously but informally with author and photographer Ella Boult, who also lives in Pomfret. Moves on September 2 to 353 West 85th Street in New York City. Attempts to enlist in the U.S. Navy in October, but is hospitalized for a month when physical examination indicates that she is suffering from Spanish influenza.

Does extensive free-lance writing for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, while working at a succession of jobs. Appears as an extra in Footlights and Shadows, a silent film starring Olive Thomas.

Lives at 569 West End Avenue and is employed by the Interchurch World Movement, where her duties include working in support of Armenian famine relief. Early in the year, meets a co-worker, Joseph Roebuck Gousha (b. August 20, 1890), a poet and critic from Pittsburgh who has also recently arrived in New York City; they attend Broadway plays together and take long walks in Tarrytown and on Staten Island. Marries Gousha on November 20 at the Church of the Transfiguration on 29th Street in Manhattan. After a honeymoon at the Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue near Pennsylvania Station, Powell and her husband decide to maintain separate households, but then move in together at 31 Riverside Drive.

Son Joseph R. Gousha Jr., known as "Jojo," is born on August 22 at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan after difficult delivery. Powell remains in hospital with son for three weeks.

Begins her first novel, Whither, an autobiographical work about her early days in New York; writes mostly in Central Park and in the Children's Room of the New York Public Library. Joseph abandons writing and begins successful career in advertising.

It becomes obvious that Jojo is mentally impaired (possibly autistic, a condition then not identified; he will be classified and ministered to as "retarded" or "schizophrenic" throughout most of his life, although his capacity for memorization and certain intellectual tasks is on the genius level). Joseph's financial success permits the family to hire Louise Lee as nurse and caretaker for Jojo (Lee remains with the household until 1954). Family begins practice of renting a summer beach cottage in Mt. Sinai, Long Island.

Moves with family to 46 West Ninth Street in Greenwich Village. Whither is accepted by the Boston publisher Small, Maynard.

Whither is published and almost immediately disavowed by Powell. Writes a second novel, She Walks In Beauty, which she will always describe as her first. Begins novel The Bride's House. After disagreements with Joseph, spends several weeks in Ohio with her sisters and Orpha May Steinbrueck. Jojo's disturbances are increasingly blatant and alarming. Powell establishes a deeply devoted, and possibly romantic, friendship with the leftist playwright John Howard Lawson late in the year.

The Bride's House is completed but remains unpublished along with She Walks In Beauty. Father dies in July after a paralytic stroke. Powell's social circle includes Charles Norman, Eugene Jolas, Jacques LeClercq, Esther Andrews, and Canby Chambers, and she becomes acquainted with Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and Theodore Dreiser. Begins writing book reviews for the New York Evening Post, to which she will contribute for more than three decades.

Spends most of the year working on plays, short stories, and free-lance work for magazines, while trying to find a publisher for her two unpublished novels (later claims that She Walks In Beauty was turned down by 36 publishers).

Lives at 106 Perry Street in Greenwich Village. She Walks In Beauty is published by Brentano's, to generally favorable reviews and unremarkable sales. Joseph is briefly unemployed in the fall and Powell responds by writing a first draft of "The Party," a play (later retitled Big Night) satirizing the advertising world, in a period of three weeks. Starts work on novel Dance Night.

The Bride's House is published; it meets with less success than her previous book. Jojo, sporadically violent and out of control, is now confined to hospitals or special schools much of the time. Powell becomes a close friend of Margaret Burnham De Silver, a wealthy woman whose schizophrenic daughter is resident in the same New Jersey institution as Jojo. Another close friend is the editor Coburn Gilman, who becomes Powell's favorite drinking companion. Late in the year, Powell has what is diagnosed as a heart attack at the family vacation home on Long Island and is brought back by taxi to New York, where she is hospitalized for several weeks. (Attack is probably symptom of a chest teratoma that she will suffer from until 1949.)

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