Mabel Maney is an

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

from

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

known for her

lesbian pulp fiction Lesbian pulp fiction is a genre of lesbian literature that refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel or pulp magazine with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 60s by many of the same pa ...

. She is the author of the Nancy Clue series, a

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...

of the

Nancy Drew Nancy Drew is a Fictional character, fictional character appearing in several Mystery fiction, mystery book series, movies, and a TV show as a teenage amateur sleuth. The books are ghostwriter, ghostwritten by a number of authors and published ...

Cherry Ames Cherry Ames is the central character in a series of 27 mystery novels with hospital settings published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1943 and 1968. Helen Wells (1910-1986) wrote volumes #1-7 and 17-27, and Julie Campbell Tatham (1908-1999), the cr ...

, and

Hardy Boys The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterpa ...

series. More recently, she is the author of the "Jane Bond" novels, a series of parodies of

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

. Mabel's short fiction can also be found in the humor

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

, "May Contain Nuts". Maney is famous for the

quote Quote is a hypernym of quotation, as the repetition or copy of a prior statement or thought. Quotation marks are punctuation marks that indicate a quotation. Both ''quotation'' and ''quotation marks'' are sometimes abbreviated as "quote(s)". C ...

"For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian." Mabel was born in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. Her family moved to the midwest where she was educated and permanently scarred by dour nuns. She was one of five children in an Irish Catholic family in

Appleton, Wisconsin Appleton ( mez, Ahkōnemeh) is a city in Outagamie, Calumet, and Winnebago counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. One of the Fox Cities, it is situated on the Fox River, southwest of Green Bay and north of Milwaukee. Appleton is the c ...

where she worked in her family's paper hat factory. She graduated from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

with a bachelor's degree in Journalism and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

. Her MFA thesis explored the subtext of novels featuring 1940s heroine Nurse Cherry Ames.

Bibliography

* ''The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse'' (Nancy Clue Mysteries) (1992) ; * ''The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend'' (1994) ; * ''A Ghost in the Closet'' (Hardly Boys Mysteries) (1995) ; * ''Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An Original Jane Bond Parody'' (2001) ; (a finalist for a

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

) * ''The Girl with the Golden Bouffant: An Original Jane Bond Parody'' (2004) ; * ''May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor (2004) ;

References

Sources

Mabel Maney Biography at HarperCollins
at GLBTQ: Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture] (1995)

External links

*http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/17552/Mabel_Maney/index.aspx *https://web.archive.org/web/20120928202202/http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/interviewmmaney.html 1958 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists American lesbian writers American parodists American LGBT novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers {{US-novelist-1950s-stub