Winifred Sanford

Winifred Balch Mahon Sanford (March 16, 1890 - March 24, 1983) was an American writer, best known for her short stories which often focused on the oil industry.

She was published in Woman's Home Companion, North American Review and The American Mercury during the 1920s and 1930s. Sanford's writing has been valued for its literary merit and also for her critical view of Texas culture changing and adapting to the oil industry.

Biography Sanford was born in Duluth, Minnesota, to an educated family. She attended Duluth Central High School, where she graduated in 1907. She attended Mount Holyoke College for only a year before she went on to the University of Michigan. Mencken's friendship with Sanford took the form of "friendly correspondence" and went on until he resigned as an editor in the early 1930s. During these correspondences, Mencken encouraged her work and her writing. However, when she was unable to find a publisher, she "apparently burned the manuscript." A biography about her was written in 2013 called Winifred Sanford: The Life and Times of a Texas Writer, by Betty Holland Wiesepape. The 2013 biography also contains an appendix which includes two of her unpublished short stories.

A 1995 film written by her grandson, The Stars Fell on Henrietta, was based on Sanford's short story, "Luck." She also found that she received good support and feedback by being part of a writer's group in Wichita Falls, the Manuscript Club.

Sanford used the short story form partly because it worked well within the publishing model used by magazine in the early 1900s. Mencken himself liked the realism and objectivity that appeared in her stories.