Mabel Maney is an American

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

from

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

known for her

lesbian pulp fiction Lesbian pulp fiction is a genre of lesbian literature that refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel or pulp magazine with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 1960s by many of the same pap ...

. She is the author of the Nancy Clue series, a

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

of the

Nancy Drew Nancy Drew is a fictional character appearing in several mystery book series, movies, video games, and TV shows as a teenage amateur sleuth. The books are ghostwriter, ghostwritten by a number of authors and published under the collective pseudo ...

Cherry Ames Cherry Ames is the central character in a series of 27 mystery novels with hospital settings published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1943 and 1968. Helen Wells (1910-1986) wrote volumes #1–7 and #17–27, and Julie Campbell Tatham (1908–1999), ...

, and

Hardy Boys The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in a series of mystery novels for young readers. The series revolves around teenage amateur sleuths, solving cases that often stumped their adult counterparts. ...

series. More recently, she is the author of the "Jane Bond" novels, a series of parodies of

James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...

. Mabel's short fiction can also be found in the humor

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

, "May Contain Nuts". Maney is famous for the

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"For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian." Mabel was born in

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

. Her family moved to the midwest where she was educated and permanently scarred by dour nuns. She was one of five children in an Irish Catholic family in

Appleton, Wisconsin Appleton () is the county seat of Outagamie County, Wisconsin, United States, with small portions extending into Calumet County, Wisconsin, Calumet and Winnebago County, Wisconsin, Winnebago counties. Located on the Fox River (Green Bay tributary ...

where she worked in her family's paper hat factory. She graduated from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

with a bachelor's degree in Journalism and received a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admi ...

degree from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

. Her MFA thesis explored the subtext of novels featuring 1940s heroine Nurse Cherry Ames.

Bibliography

* ''The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse'' (Nancy Clue Mysteries) (1992) ; * ''The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend'' (1994) ; * ''A Ghost in the Closet'' (Hardly Boys Mysteries) (1995) ; * ''Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An Original Jane Bond Parody'' (2001) ; (a finalist for a

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary Foundation, Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literatur ...

) * ''The Girl with the Golden Bouffant: An Original Jane Bond Parody'' (2004) ; * ''May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor'' (2004) ;

References

Sources

Mabel Maney Biography at HarperCollins
at GLBTQ: Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture] (1995)

External links

*http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/17552/Mabel_Maney/index.aspx *https://web.archive.org/web/20120928202202/http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/interviewmmaney.html 1958 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists American lesbian writers American parodists American LGBTQ novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers {{US-novelist-1950s-stub