Writing career

Merriam's first book was the 1946 Family Circle, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.

Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, was described as one of the most banned books of the time. It inspired a 1971 Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 musical called Inner City and a 1982 musical production called Street Dreams. In 1981 she won the NCTE

NCTE

NCTE may refer to:* The National Center for Transgender Equality* The US-based National Council of Teachers of English* The National Centre for Technology in Education, an Irish Government agency...

 Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. She published a total of 88 books.

Personal life

Born as Eva Moskovitz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, she was married for a time to writer Leonard C. Lewin

Leonard C. Lewin

Leonard C. Lewin was an American writer, best known as the author of the bestseller The Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace...

. She later married screenwriter Waldo Salt

Waldo Salt

Waldo Miller Salt was an American screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the era of McCarthyism.-Early life and career:...

 and was actress Jennifer Salt

Jennifer Salt

Jennifer Salt is an American producer, screenwriter, and former actress.-Life and career:Salt was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were screenwriter Waldo Salt and actress Mary Davenport; her stepmother was the writer Eve Merriam...

's stepmother.

Core Biographical Material

• "Eve Merriam, Poet and Author Who Wrote for Children, Is Dead," Bruce Lambert, The New York Times, April 13, 1992.
• Heffer, Helen Ruth Julian. A Checklist of Works by and about Eve Merriam. Master’s thesis, University of Maryland, 1980. Includes 84-page biographcial essay.
• Copeland, J. S., Speaking of Poets: Interviews with Poets Who Write for Children and Young Adults (1993).
• short biography from Wisconsin Writers' Collection at MITH
• Biography at Jewish Women's Archive
• Anne Commire, ed. “Eve Merriam.” In Something About the Author, vol. 40. Detrolt: Gale Research Co., 1985.

In other works

• Randy Shilts. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life &Times of Harvey Milk (New York: St. Martins, 1982).
• Kate Weigand. Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

Archival Materials

• Finding Aid for holdings related to Eve Merriam in the University of Minnesota
  University of Minnesota
  The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
  
   Libraries Children's Literature Research Collection
• Holdings in The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at Radcliffe
  Radcliffe
  - Places :England* Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, England** Radcliffe Tower, the remains of a medieval manor house in the town* Radcliffe, Northumberland, England* Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, EnglandUnited States* Radcliffe, Iowa, USA...
  
  . See
  • Finding Aids for papers, additional papers, further papers
  • Finding Aids for audiovisual materials