Miriam Allen De Ford

Born in Philadelphia in 1888 and later based in San Francisco, Miriam Allen deFord studied at Wellesley College, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania before working as a reporter. She was active in the women's suffrage movement, supported birth control education, and wrote for left-wing publications including The Masses, The Liberator, and the Federated Press.

DeFord wrote across several fields, but she is especially remembered for mystery fiction and science fiction. She won a 1961 Edgar Award for The Overbury Affair, a true-crime study, and science-fiction critics also note her long run of imaginative short stories, many of them published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her collections include Xenogenesis and Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow, and she also edited Space, Time and Crime.

Her work is often praised for being crisp, intelligent, and socially alert. Alongside fiction, she also worked on nonfiction, contributed to humanist writing, and was associated with Charles Fort as a researcher. I couldn't confirm a suitable portrait image from the sources I checked, so none is included here.