Miriam Allen deFord

Miriam Allen deFord (August 21, 1888 - February 22, 1975) was an American writer best known for her mysteries and science fiction. During the 1920s, she wrote for a number of left-wing magazines including The Masses, The Liberator, and the Federated Press Bulletin. Her short story, A Death in the Family, appeared on the second season, episode #2, segment one, of Night Gallery. Biography Work and beliefs Born in Philadelphia, deFord studied at Wellesley College and Temple University. She later studied at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked as a newspaper reporter for a time. She later described herself as a "born feminist" and was active in the Women's suffrage movement before 1920. A campaigner and disseminator of birth control information to women, she was a member of the Socialist Party of America from 1919 to 1922. Her feminist work is documented in From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk About Their Lives, edited by Sherna B. Gluck. During the 1930s, deFord joined the Federal Writers' Project and wrote the book They Were San Franciscans for the Project. Interviewed for the League of American Writers pamphlet Writers Take Sides about the Spanish Civil War, deFord expressed strong support for the Spanish Republic. She added, "I am unalterably and actively opposed to fascism, Nazism, Hitlerism, Hirohitoism, or whatever name may be applied to the monster."