Marijane Meaker

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."

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-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." 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. 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." As Vin Packer, Meaker wrote the groundbreaking romance novel Spring Fire, published in 1952, which along with Tereska Torres' Women's Barracks is credited with launching the genre of 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.'" 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." Cover of "We, Too, Must Love" by Ann Aldrich (Marijane Meaker). Illustration by John J. Floherty Jr. 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." In 1970, 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." 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." 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."

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."