Phyllis A. Whitney (1903–2008)

Mystery author Phyllis A. Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan to American parents on September 9, 1903. After her father's death in 1918, she and her mother traveled from Japan to San Francisco, California on an ocean liner. In 1924, she graduated from McKinley High School in Chicago and sold short stories to newspapers, church papers, and pulp magazines as well as worked in bookstores and libraries. She was a Children's Book Editor of the Chicago Sun's Book Week from 1942 to 1946 and the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1947 to 1948. She also taught juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University in 1945 and at New York University from 1947 to 1958. She writes both juvenile and adult mysteries, many set in an exotic location. Her first juvenile book was published in 1941 and her first adult novel was published in 1943. Since then, she has written over 75 books. She has won numerous awards including the Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1961 and 1964, the Sequoyah Award of Oklahoma, and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1988. Phyllis A. Whitney passed away on February 8, 2008 at the age of 104. (Bowker Author Biography)

— biography from Woman without a Past

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