Mary Maud Dunn Wright

Lilith Lorraine was the pen-name of Mary Maude Dunn Wright (March 19, 1894 — November 9, 1967) an American pulp fiction author, poet, journalist and editor.

Early life Mary Maude Dunn was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the daughter of John Beamond "Red" Dunn and Lelia Nias Dunn. Her father was a Texas Ranger. She attended the Incarnate Word Academy in Corpus Christi, and earned a teaching certificate at age 16. She taught in a rural Texas school as a young woman.

Career Journalism After marrying at the age of 18, Lorraine worked in the 1920s as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, and later for other west coast papers. During World War II she wrote for the San Antonio Evening News. Other stories by Lorraine included "Into the 28th Century" (Science and Wonder, 1929), a time-travel story featuring artificial wombs, eugenics, inhaled nutrition, hovercraft, and a woman as President of the United States in 1955; "The Jovian Jest" (Astounding Stories, 1930), "The Celestial Visitor" (Wonder Stories, 1935), "The Isle of Madness" (Wonder Stories, 1935), "Books Hold That Line" (1935), "Entropy" (Orb, 1952), and "Ancestors" (The Avalonian, 1952). She published several collections of her poetry in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In the 1940s she was billed as the "founder-director of the Avalon National Poetry Shrine", later known as the Avalon World Arts Academy. In connection with Avalon, she wrote a textbook, Character against Chaos (1947). Her Wine of Wonder (1951) was billed as the first volume of science fiction poetry.

Pseudonyms There may be some poetry (and possibly fiction) of Lorraine's that was published under unknown pseudonyms, which Lorraine refused to divulge. "Three of my pen-names are masculine," she explained to a reporter in 1965, "and if the editors and publishers knew I was a woman they wouldn't pay me more than half what they do now."