Meaker, Marijane (Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich)

Meaker, Marijane (Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich)

27 May 1927

Auburn, New York

22 November 2022

Writer

Ann Aldrich, Laura Winston, M. E. Kerr, Mary James, Vin Packer

Marijane Meaker wrote under several pseudonyms: Vin Packer for thrillers under the Gold Medal imprint, Ann Aldrich for lesbiana and M.E. Kerr for young adult novels. As Vin Packer, she wrote Spring Fire in 1952 which was Fawcett Gold Medal's first lesbian paperback specifically intended to benefit from the success of Tereska Torres' Women's Barracks which Fawcett had published in 1950. The only restriction imposed on Meaker was that the novel could not have a happy ending lest it be seized by the Post Office as obscene. The sympathetic portrayal of a doomed affair between two sorority sisters ensured its popularity.

Meaker went on to write controversial studies on the nature of lesbianism and the role of advocacy groups such as the Daughters of Bilitis using the pseudonym "Ann Aldrich"; the editor-in-chief at Gold Medal had suggested something all-American "like 'Henry Aldrich', the kid on the radio show." 

We Walk Alone Through Lesbos' Lonely Groves by Ann Aldrich (1955), is described as "the first nonfiction book covering lesbianism as a whole written by a lesbian" [Meeker, p. 168]. Aldrich was censured for perpetuating negative stereotypes, hence initiating a contentious decade-long debate between Aldrich and the Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneer lesbian advocacy group and publisher of The Ladder. Aldrich continued along the same track in We, Too, Must Love (1958), Carol, in a Thousand Cities (1960), an anthology which included "The Ladder, Rung by Rung", her critical review of the DOB's publication , and in We Two Won't Last (1963). Please refer to Michael Meeker for a detailed account of this episode as representative of "the politics of communication".

Margaret A. Edwards Award, 1993

Genzlinger, Neil. "Marijane Meaker, 95, Who Took Lesbian Pulp Fiction Mainstream, Dies." The New York Times, 2022.

Kerr, M.E. "The Writing Life." Lambda Book Report, Vol. 7, No. 5, 1998. p. 12.

Meaker, Marijane. Highsmith: a Romance of the 1950s: a Memoir. Cleis Press, 2003.

Meeker, Michael. “A Queer and Contested Medium - The Emergence of Representational Politics in the ‘Golden Age’ of Lesbian Paperbacks, 1955-1963.” Journal Of Women's History, vol. 17, no. 1, 2005, pp. 165–188.

"Marijane Meaker." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijane_Meaker. Accessed 17 March 2019.

Terrence Paris