M. E. Kerr

Marijane Agnes Meaker (May 27, 1927 – November 21, 2022) was an American writer who, along with Tereska Torres, was credited with launching the lesbian pulp fiction genre, the only accessible novels on that theme in the 1950s.

Under the name Vin Packer, she wrote mystery and crime novels, including ''Spring Fire''. As Ann Aldrich, she wrote nonfiction books about lesbians, and as M.E. Kerr, she wrote young-adult fiction. As Mary James, she wrote books for younger children.

Meaker won multiple awards including the American Library Association's lifetime award for young-adult literature, the ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award. She was described by ''The New York Times Book Review'' as "one of the grand masters of young adult fiction."

Meaker's books feature complex characters that have difficult relationships and complicated problems, who rail against conformity. Meaker said of this approach, " I remember being depressed by all the neatly tied-up, happy-ending stories, the abundance of winners, the themes of winning, solving, finding — when around me it didn't seem that easy. So I write with a different feeling when I write for young adults. I guess I write for myself at that age."Danielson, Audrey
"M. E. Kerr"
The Book Report Network: teenreads (teenreads.com).

Early life and education

Meaker was born May 27, 1927, in Auburn, New York, to Ellis R. Meaker and the former Ida T. Jonick. Her father was a mayonnaise manufacturer. She spent her childhood in Auburn. She mentioned in an autobiography that Carson McCullers' book ''Member of the Wedding'' influenced her. In a 2006 interview, Meaker said of McCullers, "I was drawn to all McCullers’s books. She was an underdog (competition), underdog-lover as I am. She was also this sensitive, intelligent writer whose words were lovely. I felt she was a champion of everyone who felt out-of-step with the world. I still feel that way.""Words on HomoWords: Marijane Meaker Lesbian Writer With Many-A-Name and Even More Books
In Queerfeed: The Gay News Wire
October 10, 2006. Meaker grew up in a house filled with books and was fascinated by the concept of writing and writers. She was particularly interested in the idea of a pseudonym, that one could invent a new name, and a new personality with each name.

Meaker asked her parents to send her to Stuart Hall School, a boarding school in Staunton, Virginia, when she heard that lesbian activity occurred frequently at boarding schools. Unfortunately, she was kicked out: "I was an unruly, rebellious child – a troublemaker with low marks. I was suspended in my senior year for throwing darts at a dartboard decorated with the pictures of faculty members cut out of an old yearbook. My mother's pleas to the bishop (it was an Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Episcopal school) got me reinstated long enough to graduate." As a high-school junior she began submitting stories to women's magazines under the name "Eric Rantham McKay" and was soundly rejected.

Meaker later attended Vermont Junior College in 1945 and the University of Missouri from 1946 to 1949, where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. She wasn't interested in conforming to the rules of a sorority, though; she preferred to seek friends who were also writers. She made frequent submissions to literary magazines and collected many rejection slips.

Meaker sold her first story to ''Ladies' Home Journal'' under the name Laura Winston for $750.

Writing career

Vin Packer

Upon graduation, she worked as a file clerk with Dutton Publishing, then as a proofreader with Gold Medal Books, and began writing mostly mystery novels as Vin Packer. According to her autobiographical young adult book ''ME ME ME ME: Not a Novel'' (1984), Meaker began her professional writing career by posing as a literary agent, whose "clients" consisted of her own pen names. As Packer, Meaker wrote 20 books in all, including ''The Evil Friendship'' from 1958, an account of the Parker–Hulme murder case in New Zealand. Two books by Packer were loosely based on the Emmett Till murder and the aftermath of the investigation: ''3-Day Terror'' and ''Dark Don't Catch Me''. Unlike other popular crime writers in the pulp market, Packer's books were less based on action, and more "psychologically dense" and "insidious".Server, Lee. "Vin Packer." Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers: The Essential Guide to More than 200 Pulp Pioneers and Mass-Market Masters; Checkmark Books, 2002. One mystery critic said of Packer's books, "Her probing accounts of the roots of crime are richly detailed snapshots of their times, unconventional, intensely readable, and devoid of heroes, villains, or pat solutions."Lovisi, Gary. The Return of Vin Packer: Marijane Meaker Resurrects a Pen Name from the Glory Days of Pulp Fiction." ''Mystery Scene'': Issue 100, Summer 2007, pp. 36–38.
As Vin Packer, Meaker wrote the groundbreaking romance novel ''Spring Fire'', published in 1952 in literature, 1952, which along with Tereska Torres' ''Women's Barracks'' is credited with launching the genre of Lesbian pulp fiction, lesbian "pulp" fiction. ''Spring Fire'' was a response to the immense success of the 1950 Torres novel, which sold 4.5 million copies. Eager to continue their financial success, editor Dick Carroll asked Meaker to write a book with a lesbian theme. Her original story idea involved a romance between two students of a boarding school, but editor Dick Carroll asked her to change it to sorority sisters because the boarding school setting was too risky. "He said, 'Well, it has to be a sorority, because a boarding school is too young.' He added, 'Make sure that these girls turn away from homosexuality because it is immoral, don't just have them talk about it being a hard life. We have to pass postal inspection.'" Writer Ann Bannon has credited her beginnings as an author of lesbian fiction to discovering the Vin Packer novels in the 1950s."Writer Ann Bannon"
(audio). Interview by NPR ''Fresh Air''. Broadcast December 8, 1999; again August 25, 2003 in tandem with Meaker interview. The response to ''Spring Fire'' was beyond all Meaker's and Gold Medal Books' expectations. Meaker states she got "boxes of mail" from women who were thrilled to see a book that addressed a lesbian relationship; gay audiences weren't considered a market at this time.

Paperback novels were rarely reviewed by mainstream literary reviews, but a Packer novel titled, ''Come Destroy Me'' was noticed by ''The New York Times'' crime-fiction reviewer Anthony Boucher. Meaker said, "I decided then and there that I would never write an ordinary story again; that if I was writing for paperback, I would write suspense because I wanted the reviews." Soon after editor Dick Carroll from Gold Medal Books died, Meaker stopped writing as Vin Packer.

Ann Aldrich

Meaker used the pseudonym Ann Aldrich for a series of five books published as
paperback originals, but which were in fact nonfiction works. She read Donald Webster Cory's book ''The Homosexual in America'', which was a nonfiction book about gay men. Noticing there was nothing similar for lesbians, Meaker used her own observations of lesbians and the lives of lesbians that included ''We Walk Alone'' in 1955, ''We, Too, Must Love'' in 1958, ''Carol in a Thousand Cities'' in 1960, ''We Two Won't Last'' in 1963, and ''Take A Lesbian To Lunch'' in 1972. The Feminist Press re-released ''We Walk Alone'' and ''We, Too, Must Love'' in 2007. Meaker said of this series, "The Aldrich books were more like resource books. A lot of the mail I got was from people wanting to know where the bars were in New York, where they could live, where I had lived. You know, they wanted to know how to get to New York and how to get to these bars."Meeker, Martin. "Pulp Legacy". ''Lambda Book Report'' 13:6–8 (Jan–Mar 2005), p. 9.

In an interview with the ''Lambda Book Report'' in 2005, Meaker reflected on the impact of her books as Ann Aldrich, saying, "I honestly never thought about anything except people like me buying the book. I never thought of us having any entitlement or any importance; it just never dawned upon me. If somebody had showed me the [gay couples in the] wedding pages of ''The New York Times'', which was awaiting us in the future, I wouldn't have believed it. I thought books were important, but these were paperbacks and so I didn't think they would last any longer than the paper that they were printed on."
These books proved to be controversial when released. Books by Ann Aldrich were not overly sympathetic toward lesbians as a group, and they caused some consternation when being discussed by the Daughters of Bilitis. Ann Aldrich and the contributors to ''The Ladder (magazine), The Ladder'' took potshots at each other in print; once, a contributor to ''The Ladder'' accused Aldrich of being Ann Bannon, stating she expressed self-loathing in her writings. In 1970, Barbara Grier, Gene Damon of ''The Ladder'' referred to Meaker as "the evil genius" for her excellent writing about unpleasant and unsatisfactory lesbian themes.

M. E. Kerr

Meaker was persuaded to try young adult fiction at the suggestion of author Louise Fitzhugh (''Harriet the Spy''), and chose to do so after reading Paul Zindel's ''The Pigman''. She chose the pen name M. E. Kerr, as a phonetic play on her last name. Although the audience was different from Vin Packer's, Kerr's approach to her stories and characters seemed to vary little. She still addressed topics not usually covered by children's books: racism, AIDS, homosexuality, absent parents, social class differences, and her characters still had problems that had no easy solutions. She said of this direction, "I tend to write about people who struggle, who try to overcome obstacles, who usually do, but sometimes not. People who have all the answers and few problems have never interested me, not to write about, not to befriend." Kerr's books addressed functions and dysfunctions in relationships between parents and children, teachers and students, friends, and she often wrote about first loves.

Kerr's first attempt was extremely successful. ''Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!'' was published in 1972 and was about an overweight girl whose mother is so preoccupied with assisting people addicted to drugs that she virtually ignores her own daughter. It was listed by the ''School Library Journals 20th century 100 most significant books for children and young adults. The story was inspired by a class Meaker taught by going into high schools and talking to students about writing. One overweight girl wrote stories Meaker characterized as "really grotesque"; when her mother, a local do-gooder, found out Meaker was encouraging her, she complained that Meaker was trying to get her daughter to "write weird." The novel would later be turned into an ''ABC Afterschool Special'' (as "Dinky Hocker)" in 1979 with Wendie Jo Sperber in the title role.

''Is That You, Miss Blue?'', published in 1975, involves a girl in a Virginia Episcopal boarding school who develops a crush on her religiously devout teacher. Kerr modeled the story on her own experiences in boarding school when she developed a crush on one of her own teachers.

1978's ''Gentlehands'' is about a young man who becomes involved with a young woman from a much wealthier family. When he tries to get to know his estranged grandfather, he learns that the man was a Nazi who killed Jews at Auschwitz. The premise for the book, stated Kerr, was, "I wanted to provoke the idea of what if you meet a nice guy, a really nice man, and what if you find out that in his past he wasn't such a nice man? How would you feel?"

In 1994's ''Deliver Us From Evie'', 16-year-old Parr tells the story of his 18-year-old sister Evie's relationship with another girl and also of his own interest in a girl whose family rejects homosexuality as immoral. Kerr again addressed homosexuality in 1997's ''"Hello," I Lied'', about a young man who finds himself pulled in multiple directions.

Mary James

In the 1990s, Meaker added the pen name Mary James for a series of novels aimed at readers younger than the Kerr readership; it was not until 1994, after the publication of the third Mary James novel, that the covers indicated that the author was also known as M. E. Kerr."M.E. Kerr (aka Mary James & Vin Packer)"
''Authors and Artists Available for Appearances''. Balkin Buddies. Mary James books include ''Shoebag'', ''The Shuteyes'', ''Frankenlouse'' and ''Shoebag Returns''.

Meaker gave advice in an interview for any aspiring writer, from her own experience: "I would tell aspiring writers to read. Read, read, read, read ... Read the kind of books you'd like to write. Study your competition, see how they do it. Go away to college, or to work or whatever. See some of the world away from where you live. Try to join or start a writers' group where everyone shares what they're working on."

Impact and legacy

Meaker, along with Torres, is credited with creating the lesbian pulp fiction subgenre. She is named by literary scholar Yvonne Keller as one of a small group of writers whose work formed the subgenre of "pro-lesbian" pulp fiction; others include Ann Bannon, Sloane Britain, Paula Christian, Joan Ellis, March Hastings, Marjorie Lee, Della Martin, Rea Michaels, Patricia Highsmith, Claire Morgan, Randy Salem, Artemis Smith, Valerie Taylor (novelist), Valerie Taylor, Torres, and Shirley Verel.

Personal life and death

In her early life, Meaker admits to dating men because it was expected of her. She said of meeting the expectations of her family and friends despite knowing she was a lesbian: "I dealt with it by playing the game: dating, going steady with a serviceman I really liked, but not 'that way' and in general coping as we all had to do by behaving like everyone else."

Meaker was involved romantically with author Patricia Highsmith for two years. She wrote about this relationship in the 2003 nonfiction memoir, ''Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s,'' and discussed it and her own pulp fiction novels in interviews around the time of the book's release. Meaker explained her reasons behind writing about their relationship: "I knew Pat when she was young and not yet so jaded and bigoted. The internet is filled with stories of her meanness, and prejudice, and also of her introversion, of her being a loner. I met that Pat many years after we broke up."

As of 2006, Meaker was living in East Hampton (town), New York, East Hampton, New York (state), New York, where she taught writing classes at the Ashawagh Hall Writers' Workshop. Her workshop experiences led to the nonfiction instructional book, ''Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing'' (1998).

Meaker died of cardiopulmonary arrest at her home in Springs, New York, on November 21, 2022, at the age of 95.

Awards

The Golden Crown Literary Society awards a Trailblazer Award each year to one author for groundbreaking works in the field of lesbian literature. Meaker won the award in 2013 and joined the likes of Ann Bannon, Sarah Aldridge, Jane Rule, Ellen Hart, and many others as guiding lights of lesbian literature.

The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". Meaker won the annual award in 1993 as M.E. Kerr, citing four books published from 1972 to 1986: ''Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!'' (Kerr's debut novel), ''Gentlehands'', ''Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel'', and ''Night Kites''(‡). The young-adult librarians called her "a pioneer in realistic fiction for teenagers. Her characters and plots often deal with ordinary teenagers who, faced with extraordinary situations and events, must make tough choices."

Meaker received other lifetime achievement awards from Publishing Triangle in 1998 (Bill Whitehead Award), the New York State Library Association in 1999 (Knickerbocker Award) and the Assembly on Literature in 2000 (Adolescents Award).

''Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!'' (1972) ‡
* Selected one of the ''School Library Journal'' 20th-century 100 most significant books for children and young adults
* Maxi Award, Media and Methods magazine, 1974
* Best of the Best Books (Young Adult) 1970–1983, American Library Association
* Best Children's Books of 1972, ''School Library Journal''
* ALA Notable Children's Books of 1972
''If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?''
* Children's Spring Book Festival honor book
* ''Washington Post'' Book World
* Children's Book of the Year designation, Child Study Association, 1973
''Gentlehands'' (1978) ‡
* Christopher Award, 1978
* Book of the Year Award, ''School Library Journal'', 1978
* Named one of the Best Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, 1980 and 1981
''Little Little''
* Golden Kite Award, Society of Children's Book Writers, 1981
''Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel'' (1983) ‡

''Him She Loves?''
* Emphasis on Reading Award, 1985
''Fell Back''
* Edgar Allan Poe Award finalist, 1990
''Night Kites'' (1986) ‡
*California Young Reader Medal, 1992
''Deliver Us from Evie''
* National Council of Teachers of English Best Young Adult Novels of the '90s pick
* Best Book Honor award, Michigan Library Association, 1994
* Horn Book Fanfare Honor book, 1995
''Slap Your Sides''
* New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age listee, 2002
* Oklahoma Library Association Young Adult Book Award nominee

Published works

As Vin Packer

* ''Dark Intruder'' 1952
* ''Spring Fire'' 1952
* ''Look Back to Love'' 1953
* ''Come Destroy Me'' 1954
* ''Whisper His Sin'' 1954
* ''The Thrill Kids'' 1955
* ''The Young and Violent'' 1956
* ''Dark Don't Catch Me'' 1956
* ''3 Day Terror'' 1957
* ''The Evil Friendship'' 1958
* ''5:45 to Surburbia'' 1958
* ''The Twisted Ones'' 1959
* ''The Girl on the Best Seller List'' 1960
* ''The Damnation of Adam Blessing'' 1961
* ''Something in the Shadows'' 1961
* ''Intimate Victims'' 1962
* ''Alone at Night'' 1963
* ''Sudden Endings'' 1964
* ''The Hare in March'' 1967
* ''Don't Rely on Gemini'' 1969

As Ann Aldrich

* ''We Walk Alone'' 1955
* ''We, Too, Must Love'' 1958
* ''Carol in a Thousand Cities'' 1960
* ''We Two Won't Last'' 1963
* ''Take A Lesbian To Lunch'' 1972

As M. J. Meaker

* ''Sudden Endings, 13 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides'' 1964
* ''Hometown'' 1967
* ''A Guide to the Hangover''

As Marijane Meaker

* ''Game of Survival'' 1968
* ''Shockproof Sydney Skate'' 1972 (reissued 2003)
* ''Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s'' (Cleis Press 2003)
* ''Scott Free'' 2007

As M.E. Kerr

*''Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!'' 1972 ‡
*''If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?'' 1973
*''The Son of Someone Famous'' 1974
*''Is That You, Miss Blue?'' 1975
*''Love Is A Missing Person'' 1975
*''I'll Love You When You're More Like Me'' 1977
*''Gentlehands'' 1978 ‡
*''Little Little'' 1981
*''What I Really Think of You'' 1982
*''Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel'' 1983 ‡
*''Him She Loves?'' 1984
*''I Stay Near You'' 1985
*''Night Kites'' 1986 ‡
*''Fell'' 1987
*''Fell Back'' 1989
*''Fell Down'' 1991
*''Linger'' 1993
*''Deliver Us From Evie'' 1994
*''"Hello," I Lied'' 1997
*''Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing'' 1998
*''What Became of Her'' 2000
*''Slap Your Sides'' 2001
*''Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers'' 2003
*''Your Eyes in Stars'' 2006
*''Someone Like Summer'' 2007

(‡) The YALSA, young-adult librarians cited four novels when Kerr won the 1993 Edwards Award.

As Mary James

*''Shoebag'' 1990
*''The Shuteyes'' 1993
*''Frankenlouse'' 1994
*''Shoebag Returns'' 1996

Short stories

* "Devotedly, Patrick Henry Casebolt" 1951 as Laura Winston in ''Ladies' Home Journal''
* "Hot Snow" by Vin Packer in the January 1956 issue of ''Justice Magazine''
* "Only the Guilty Run" by Vin Packer in ''Some Things Weird and Wicked'', edited by Joan Kahn and published by Pantheon in 1976
* "Jimmy from Another World" by Vin Packer in ''Cosmopolitan's Winds of Love'', published by Cosmopolitan Books in 1975
* "Do You Want My Opinion?" 1984 in ''Sixteen: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults''
* "The Sweet Perfume of Good-bye" 1988 in ''Visions: Nineteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults''
* "Sunny Days and Sunny Nights" 1989 in ''Connections: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults''
* "Son of One Eye" 1989 in ''Scope''
* "The Author" 1992 in ''Funny You Should Ask: The Delacorte Book of Original Humorous Short Stories''
* "We Might as Well All Be Strangers" 1994 in ''Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence''
* "The Green Killer" 1995 in ''Bad Behavior''
* "Like Father, Like Son" 1995 in ''Scope''
* Foreword 1997 in ''Hearing Us Out : Voices from the Gay and Lesbian Community'' by Roger Sutton
* "I Will Not Think of Maine" 1998 in ''Dirty Laundry: Stories About Family Secrets''
* "Guess Who's Back in Town, Dear?" 1999 in ''Stay True : Short Stories for Strong Girls''
* "Grace" 2000 in ''I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes With Religion''
* Contributor to ''33 Things Every Girl Should Know : Stories, Songs, Poems and Smart Talk by 33 Extraordinary Women''
* "Great Expectations" 2001 in ''On the Fringe''
* "Hearing Flower" 2004 in ''Face Relations: Eleven Stories about Seeing Beyond Color''

Further reading

*Gross, Terry. "Interview with Marijane Meaker.
Fresh Air, June 19, 2003.
*Parks, Joy
"The Book That Sparked the Fire."
Review of the new edition of ''Spring Fire'', a 1952 novel by Marijane Meaker, writing as Vin Packer.
*Meeker, Martin
''Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s–1970s.''
University of Chicago Press, 2006.
*Meaker, Marijane. Introduction. ''Spring Fire''. Written by Vin Packer. Cleis Press, 2004.

*Breen, Jon L.: The Novels of Vin Packer, in: Murder Off the Rack: Critical Studies of Ten Paperback Masters, ed. by Jon L. Breen and Martin Harry Greenberg, Metuchen, N.J., London 1989, pp. 55–69.
* Day, Frances Ann (2000). Lesbian and Gay Voices: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Literature for Children and Young Adults. Greenwood Press. pp. 201–205. .

See also

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Meaker, Marijane
1927 births
2022 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American women writers
20th-century pseudonymous writers
21st-century American novelists
21st-century American women writers
21st-century pseudonymous writers
American women novelists
American children's writers
American lesbian writers
Margaret A. Edwards Award winners, Kerr ME
Pseudonymous women writers
University of Missouri alumni
People from East Hampton (town), New York
American writers of young adult literature
American LGBT novelists
LGBT people from New York (state)
American women children's writers
Women writers of young adult literature
LGBT memoirists