Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman-Vinyard (born November 19, 1911 in Birmingham - died May 3, 1994) was a short story writer and poet, best known for her stories published in horror pulp and in mainstream magazines.

Counselman was born in Birmingham but moved as a child to Gainesville, Georgia where her father served on the faculty of the Riverside Military Academy. She attended Alabama College (now the University of Montevallo) and the University of Alabama and worked as a reporter for the Birmingham News. She married Horace Vinyard before settling in Gadsden. There she taught creative writing at Gadsden State Junior College.

During her writing career, Counselman's stories were published in Weird Tales, Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal and other publications. Some were also dramatized for television on General Electric Theater and Boris Karloff's Thriller. Some of her stories were published under the pen names "Charles DuBois", "Sanders McCrorey" or "John Starr".

Publications

• Counselman, Mary Elizabeth (1964) Half in Shadow: A Collection of Tales for the Night Hours. London: World Distributors. Reprinted in 1978 as Half in Shadow. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House. ISBN 0718302877
• Counselman, Mary Elizabeth (1977) African Yesterdays: A Collection of Native Folktales. Centre, Alabama: Coosa Printing Company.
• Counselman, Mary Elizabeth (1984) The Face of Fear: And Other Poems. Edited by Steve Eng. Pensacola, Florida: Eidolon Press.

References

• "Mary Elizabeth Counselman" at This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape
• Davin, Eric Leif (2006) "Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1911-1995 [sic])." Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965. Lanham, Maryland.: Lexington Books. p. 375.
• Ruber, Peter (2000) "Mary Elizabeth Counselman (essay)." Arkham's Masters of Horror: A 60th Anniversary Anthology Retrospective of the First 30 Years of Arkham House. Edited by Peter Ruber. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House Publishers. p. 301-306.