The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. She had one sibling, an elder sister, Joan (1900–1993), later Mrs. Detweiler. Their father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, and their mother was Katherine (Evans) Boyle, a literary and social activist who believed the wealthy had an obligation to help the financially less fortunate. In later years, Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.[2]
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.[2]
