Phyllis McGinley (21, March 1905 – 22 February, 1978) wrote poetry and children’s books. Notable for her satiric tone and light verse, Mrs. McGinley specialized in focusing on the positive side of life.
- Mrs. McGinley’s father was a land speculator. The reason they settled in Cliff, CO was because he couldn’t sell the land.
- Mr. McGinley’s father passed away when she was 12, she then moved in with relatives in Ogden.
- While attending the University of Utah, Mrs. McGinley entered a university contest for the best poetry, short stories, and essays. She submitted entries under pseudonyms in all categories and twice won all the cash awards.
- While at the college, the author also submitted her poetry to New York based magazines and moved to the city in 1929.
- While living in the big city, Mrs. McGinley held various jobs including a copywriter for an advertising agency, teacher in a junior high school in New Rochelle, and staff writer for Town and Country.
- Her future husband, Charles L. Hayden, worked for the Belle phone company and was a jazz player. Mrs. McGinley thought Mr. Hayden’s jazz playing is a sign he would not be a good husband, but they married anyway and had two daughters.
- Mrs. McGinley, who is noted for her light style of poetry, used to write much more serious verses until she got an advice from a New York fiction editor Katherine White : “Dear Miss McGinley: We are buying your poem, but why do you sing the same sad songs all lady poets sing?“
- Mrs. McGinley wrote 18 books.
- The author won a Pulitzer prize for light verse Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades with Seventy New Poems (1960) in 1961.
- The Phyllis McGinley Papers can be found at the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University.
Zohar – Man of la Book
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