M. E. Kerr

Marijane Meaker is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

novelist and short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, who has used multiple pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

s for different genres. From 1952 to 1969 she wrote twenty mystery and crime novels under the name Vin Packer including the immensely popular Spring Fire
Spring Fire
Spring Fire, is a 1952 paperback novel written by Marijane Meaker, under the pseudonym "Vin Packer". It is often considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel, although it also addresses issues of conformity in 1950s American society...

, that is credited with launching the genre of lesbian "pulp" fiction

Lesbian pulp fiction

Lesbian pulp fiction refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 60s by many of the same paperback publishing houses that other genres of fiction including Westerns, Romances, and Detective Fiction...

, although the majority of Packer's books didn't address homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

or gay characters. Using her own observations of lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote a series of nonfiction books under the name Ann Aldrich from 1955 to 1972.
In 1972 she switched genres and pen names once more to begin writing for young adults, and became quite successful as M.E. Kerr, producing over 20 novels and winning multiple awards. She was described by The New York Times Book Review as "one of the grand masters of young adult fiction." As Mary James, she has written four books for a younger children's audience.

Irrespective of genre or pen name, Meaker's books have in common complex characters that have difficult relationships and complicated problems, who rail against conformity

Conformity

Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...

. Meaker said of this approach, "I was a bookworm and a poetry lover. When I think of myself and what I would have liked to have found in books those many years ago, I remember being depressed by all the neatly tied-up, happy-ending stories, the abundance of winners, the themes of winning, solving, finding --- when around me it didn't seem that easy. So I write with a different feeling when I write for young adults. I guess I write for myself at that age."

Early life

Marijane Agnes Meaker was born to Ida T. and Ellis R. Meaker (a mayonnaise manufacturer) in Auburn

Auburn, New York

Auburn is a city in Cayuga County, New York, United States of America. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 27,687...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where she also spent her childhood. She mentions in an autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

that Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...

' book Member of the Wedding influenced her. In a 2006 interview, Meaker said of McCullers', "I was drawn to all McCullers’s books. She was an underdog

Underdog (competition)

An underdog is a person or group in a competition, frequently in electoral politics, sports and creative works, who is popularly expected to lose. The party, team or individual expected to win is called the favorite or top dog. In the rare case where an underdog wins, the outcome is an upset. These...

-lover as I am. She was also this sensitive, intelligent writer whose words were lovely. I felt she was a champion of everyone who felt out-of-step with the world. I still feel that way." Meaker grew up in a house filled with books and was fascinated by the concept of writing and writers. She was particularly interested in the idea of a pseudonym, that one could invent a new name and a new personality with each name.

Meaker received an education from Stuart Hall School

Stuart Hall School

Stuart Hall School in Staunton, Virginia was founded by the Episcopal church as Virginia Female Institute in 1844. It was renamed in 1907 in honor of its most famous headmistress, Flora Cooke Stuart, the widow of Confederate cavalry leader Maj. Gen. J.E.B...

, a boarding school

Boarding school

A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...

in Staunton, Virginia

Staunton, Virginia

Staunton is an independent city within the confines of Augusta County in the commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 23,746 as of 2010. It is the county seat of Augusta County....

, after asking her parents to send her there when she heard that lesbian activity occurred frequently at boarding schools. She was kicked out of the boarding school, she explains: "I was an unruly, rebellious child - a troublemaker with low marks. I was suspended in my senior year for throwing darts at a dartboard decorated with the pictures of faculty members cut out of an old yearbook. My mother's pleas to the bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

(it was an Episcopal school) got me reinstated long enough to graduate." She began submitting stories to women's magazines as a junior in high school under the name Eric Rantham McKay and was soundly rejected.

She later attended Vermont Junior College in 1945 and the University of Missouri

University of Missouri

The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...

from 1946 to 1949 where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi

Alpha Delta Pi

Alpha Delta Pi is a fraternity founded on May 15, 1851 at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. The Executive office for this sorority is located on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. Alpha Delta Pi is one of the two "Macon Magnolias," a term used to celebrate the bonds it shares with Phi Mu...

sorority. However, she was less interested in conforming to the rules of a sorority, and preferred to find friends who were also writers. She made frequent submissions to literary magazines and collected many rejection slips.

Meaker sold her first story to Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...

under the name Laura Winston for what she thought was $75 US, but what her roommates had to point out to her was $750.00 US.

Vin Packer

Upon graduation, she worked as a file clerk with Dutton Publishing, then as a proofreader with Gold Medal Books

Gold Medal Books

Gold Medal Books, launched by Fawcett Publications in 1950, is a U.S. book publisher known for introducing paperback originals, a publishing innovation at the time. Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to...

and began writing mostly mystery novels as Vin Packer. According to her autobiographical young adult book ME ME ME ME: Not a Novel (1984), Meaker began her professional writing career by posing as a literary agent, whose "clients" consisted of her own pen names. As Packer, Meaker wrote 20 books in all, including The Evil Friendship from 1958, an account of the Parker-Hulme murder

Parker-Hulme murder

The Parker-Hulme Murder was a murder and subsequent court case that occurred in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1954, achieving notoriety because a mother was murdered by two teenage girls: her daughter and her daughter's best friend...

in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. Two books by Packer were loosely based on the Emmett Till

Emmett Till

Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...

murder and the aftermath of the investigation: 3-Day Terror and Dark Don't Catch Me. Unlike other popular crime writers in the pulp market, Packer's books were less based on action (such as Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane

Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...

's books), and more "psychologically dense" and "insidious". One mystery critic said of Packer's books, "Her probing accounts of the roots of crime are richly detailed snapshots of their times, unconventional, intensely readable, and devoid of heroes, villains, or pat solutions."

As Vin Packer, Meaker wrote the groundbreaking romance novel Spring Fire
Spring Fire
Spring Fire, is a 1952 paperback novel written by Marijane Meaker, under the pseudonym "Vin Packer". It is often considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel, although it also addresses issues of conformity in 1950s American society...

, published in 1952

1952 in literature

The year 1952, in literature involved some significant events and new literary publications.-Events:*J. L. Carr takes over as headmaster of Highfields Primary School, Kettering, which will eventually furnish the subject matter for his novel, The Harpole Report.*November 25 - Agatha Christie's play...

, which is now credited with launching the genre of lesbian "pulp" fiction

Lesbian pulp fiction

. Spring Fire was a response to the immense success of a previous Gold Medal Books publication named Women's Barracks, that sold 4.5 million copies. Eager to continue their financial success, editor Dick Carroll asked Meaker to write a book with a lesbian theme. Her original story idea involved a romance between two students of a boarding school, but editor Dick Carroll asked her to change it to sorority sisters because the boarding school setting was too risky. "He said, 'Well, it has to be a sorority, because a boarding school is too young.' He added, 'Make sure that these girls turn away from homosexuality because it is immoral, don't just have them talk about it being a hard life. We have to pass postal inspection.'" Writer Ann Bannon

Ann Bannon

Ann Bannon is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction"...

has credited her beginnings as an author of lesbian fiction to discovering the Vin Packer novels in the 1950s. The response to Spring Fire was beyond all Meaker's and Gold Medal Books' expectations. Meaker states she got "boxes of mail" from women who were thrilled to see a book that addressed a lesbian relationship; gay audiences weren't considered a market at this time.

Paperback novels were rarely reviewed by mainstream literary reviews, but a Packer novel titled, Come Destroy Me was noticed by the New York Times crime-fiction reviewer Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...

. Meaker said, "I decided then and there that I would never write an ordinary story again; that if I was writing for paperback, I would write suspense because I wanted the reviews." Soon after editor Dick Carroll from Gold Medal Books died, Meaker stopped writing as Vin Packer.

Ann Aldrich

Meaker used the pseudonym Ann Aldrich for a series of five books published as paperback originals, but which were in fact nonfiction works. She read Donald Webster Cory's book The Homosexual in America, which was a nonfiction book about gay men. Noticing there was nothing similar for lesbians, Meaker used her own observations of lesbians and the lives of lesbians that included We Walk Alone in 1955, We, Too, Must Love in 1958, Carol in a Thousand Cities in 1960, We Two Won't Last in 1963, and Take A Lesbian To Lunch in 1972. The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. It publishes exciting writing by women and men who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality...

re-released We Walk Alone and We, Too, Must Love in 2007. Meaker said of this series, "The Aldrich books were more like resource books. A lot of the mail I got was from people wanting to know where the bars were in New York, where they could live, where I had lived. You know, they wanted to know how to get to New York and how to get to these bars."

In an interview with the Lambda Book Report in 2005, Meaker reflected on the impact of her books as Ann Aldrich, saying, "I honestly never thought about anything except people like me buying the book. I never thought of us having any entitlement or any importance; it just never dawned upon me. If somebody had showed me the [gay couples in the] wedding pages of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, which was awaiting us in the future, I wouldn't have believed it. I thought books were important, but these were paperbacks and so I didn't think they would last any longer than the paper that they were printed on."
These books proved to be controversial when released. Books by Ann Aldrich were not overly sympathetic toward lesbians as a group, and they caused some consternation when being discussed by the Daughters of Bilitis

Daughters of Bilitis

The Daughters of Bilitis , was the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955, conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment...

. Ann Aldrich and the contributors to The Ladder
The Ladder (magazine)
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization...

took potshots at each other in print, once a contributor to The Ladder accusing Aldrich of being Ann Bannon, but always stating she expressed self-loathing in her writings. In 1970, Gene Damon

Barbara Grier

Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher most widely known for co-founding Naiad Press and writing and editing The Ladder under the pseudonym Gene Damon.-Early life:...

of The Ladder referred to Meaker as "the evil genius" for her excellent writing about unpleasant and unsatisfactory lesbian themes.

Meaker was persuaded to try young adult fiction at the suggestion of author Louise Fitzhugh

Louise Fitzhugh

Louise Fitzhugh was an American author and illustrator of young adult and children's literature.Her work includes Harriet the Spy, its sequels The Long Secret and Sport, and Nobody's Family is Going to Change.-Early life:Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she soon experienced her parents' divorce, from...

(Harriet the Spy
Harriet the Spy
Harriet the Spy is a children's novel by Louise Fitzhugh published in 1964. It won the Sequoyah Book Award and the New York Times Outstanding Book Award in 1964.-Plot summary:...

), and chose to do so after reading Paul Zindel

Paul Zindel

Paul Zindel Jr. was an American playwright, author, and educator.-Early years:Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel,Sr., a policeman, and Beatrice Frank, a nurse; his sister, Betty Hagen, was a year and a half older than he. Paul Zindel, Sr...

's The Pigman
The Pigman
The Pigman is a young adult novel written by Paul Zindel, first published in 1968. Zindel wrote a screenplay, adapting the book for the stage and screen, but it was not taken up by any film maker.-Plot:...

. She chose the pen name M.E. Kerr, as a phonetic play on her last name. Although the audience was different from Vin Packer's, Kerr's approach to her stories and characters seemed to vary little. She still addressed topics not usually covered by children's books: racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

, homosexuality

Homosexuality

, absent parents, social class

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

differences, and her characters still had problems that had no easy solutions. She said of this direction, "I tend to write about people who struggle, who try to overcome obstacles, who usually do, but sometimes not. People who have all the answers and few problems have never interested me, not to write about, not to befriend." Kerr's books addressed functions and dysfunctions in relationships between parents and children, teachers and students, friends, and she often wrote about first loves.

Kerr's first attempt was extremely successful. Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was published in 1972 and was about an overweight girl whose mother is so preoccupied with assisting people addicted to drugs that her daughter is virtually ignored.
It was listed by the School Library Journal

School Library Journal

The School Library Journal is a monthly magazine with articles and reviews for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with a focus on technology and multimedia. Reviews are included for preschool to 4th grade,...

s 20th century 100 most significant books for children and young adults. The story was inspired by a class Meaker taught by going into high schools and talking to students about writing. One overweight girl wrote stories Meaker characterized as, "really grotesque", and when her mother (a local do-gooder) found out Meaker was encouraging her, complained that she was trying to get her daughter to "write weird." The novel would later be turned into a ABC Afterschool Special

ABC Afterschool Special

The ABC Afterschool Special is an American television anthology series that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1996, usually in the late afternoon on week days. Most of the episodes were dramatic presentations of situations, often controversial, of interest to children and teenagers. Several episodes were...

as "Dinky Hocker
Dinky Hocker
Dinky Hocker is a American television teen comedy/drama that aired as a ABC Afterschool Special on December 12, 1979. It was based on the 1972 novel Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack by M.E...

" in 1979 with Wendie Jo Sperber
Wendie Jo Sperber
Wendie Jo Sperber was an American actress, best known for her performances in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand , Bachelor Party and Back to the Future as well as the television sitcom Bosom Buddies .-Life:Sperber was born in Hollywood and aimed for a performing-arts career from high school onward...

in the title role.

Is That You, Miss Blue? published in 1975 involves the story of a girl in a Virginia Episcopal boarding school who develops a crush on her religiously devout teacher. Kerr modeled the story on her own experiences in boarding school when she developed a crush on one of her own teachers.

Kerr's novel Gentlehands, from 1978, is about a young man who becomes involved with a young woman who is much wealthier than he is. He tries to get to know his estranged grandfather, to learn that his grandfather was a Nazi who killed Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

at Auschwitz. The premise for the book, stated Kerr, was, "I wanted to provoke the idea of what if you meet a nice guy, a really nice man, and what if you find out that in his past he wasn't such a nice man? How would you feel?"

Deliver Us From Evie, published in 1994, tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who falls in love with another girl in her town, but told in the perspective of her younger brother, whose interest lies with a girl whose family rejects homosexuality as immoral. In Hello, I Lied, Kerr again addressed homosexuality in 1997 in a story about a young man who finds himself pulled in multiple directions.

Her instructional book, Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing (1998), arose in part from these experiences as a writing instructor. Notably, in 1993, Meaker received a lifetime achievement award in the form of the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association

American Library Association

The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

Mary James

In the 1990s, Meaker added the pen name Mary James for a series of novels aimed at readers younger than the Kerr readership; it was not until 1994, after the publication of the third Mary James novel, that the covers indicated that the author was also known as M. E. Kerr. Mary James books include Shoebag, The Shuteyes, Frankenlouse and Shoebag Returns.

Meaker gave advice in an interview for any aspiring writer, from her own experience: "I would tell aspiring writers to read. Read, read, read, read... Read the kind of books you'd like to write. Study your competition, see how they do it. Go away to college, or to work or whatever. See some of the world away from where you live. Try to join or start a writers' group where everyone shares what they're working on."

Personal life

In her early life, Meaker admits to dating men because it was expected of her. She said of meeting the expectations of her family and friends despite knowing she was a lesbian: "I dealt with it by playing the game: dating, going steady with a serviceman I really liked, but not 'that way' and in general coping as we all had to do by behaving like everyone else."

Meaker was involved romantically with author Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...

for two years. She wrote about this relationship in the 2003 non-fiction memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, and discussed it and her own pulp-fiction novels in interviews around the time of the book's release. Meaker explained her reasons behind writing about their relationship: "I knew Pat when she was young and not yet so jaded and bigoted. The internet is filled with stories of her meanness, and prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...

, and also of her introversion, of her being a loner. I met that Pat many years after we broke up."

As of 2006, Meaker was living in East Hampton

East Hampton (town), New York

The Town of East Hampton is located in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, at the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. It is the easternmost town in the state of New York...

, New York

New York

, where she taught writing classes at the Ashawagh Hall Writers' Workshop. Her workshop experiences led to the nonfiction instructional book, Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing (1998).

Awards

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! Chosen by School Library Journal
School Library Journal
The School Library Journal is a monthly magazine with articles and reviews for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with a focus on technology and multimedia. Reviews are included for preschool to 4th grade,...

s 20th century 100 most significant books for children and young adults
- Maxi Award, Media and Methods magazine, 1974
- Best of the Best Books (Young Adult) 1970-1983, American Library Association
- Best Children's Books of 1972, School Library Journal
- ALA Notable Children's Books of 1972
- Cited for Margaret A. Edwards Award, 1993
If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?
- Children's Spring Book Festival honor book
- Washington Post Book World
- Children's Book of the Year designation, Child Study Association, 1973
Gentlehands
- Christopher Award, 1978
- Book of the Year Award, School Library Journal, 1978
- Named one of the Best Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library
  New York Public Library
  The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
  
  , 1980 and 1981
Little Little
- Golden Kite Award, Society of Children's Book Writers, 1981
Him She Loves?
- Emphasis on Reading Award, 1985
Fell Back
- Edgar Allan Poe Award finalist, 1990
Night Kites
- California Young Reader Medal, 1992
Deliver Us from Evie
- National Council of Teachers of English
  National Council of Teachers of English
  The National Council of Teachers of English is an American professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education...
  
  Best Young Adult Novels of the '90s pick
- Best Book Honor award, Michigan Library Association, 1994
- Horn Book Fanfare Honor book, 1995
Overall achievement: Margaret A. Edwards Award, American Library Association, 1993
Knickerbocker Lifetime Achievement Award, New York State Library Association, 1999
Assembly on Literature for Adolescents Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000
Slap Your Sides
- New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age listee, 2002
- Oklahoma Library Association Young Adult Book Award nominee

As Vin Packer

Dark Intruder 1952
Spring Fire 1952
Look Back to Love 1953
Come Destroy Me 1954
Whisper His Sin 1954
The Thrill Kids 1955
The Young and Violent 1956
Dark Don't Catch Me 1956
3 Day Terror 1957
The Evil Friendship 1958
5:45 to Surburbia 1958
The Twisted Ones 1959
The Girl on the Best Seller List 1960
The Damnation of Adam Blessing 1961
Something in the Shadows 1961
Intimate Victims 1962
Alone at Night 1963
Sudden Endings 1964
The Hare in March 1967
Don't Rely on Gemini 1969

"Hot Snow" by Vin Packer in the January 1956 issue of Justice Magazine
"Only the Guilty Run" by Vin Packer in Some Things Weird and Wicked, edited by Joan Kahn and published by Pantheon in 1976
"Jimmy from Another World" by Vin Packer in Cosmopolitan's Winds of Love, published by Cosmopolitan Books in 1975

As Ann Aldrich

We Walk Alone 1955
We, Too, Must Love 1958
Carol in a Thousand Cities 1960
We Two Won't Last 1963
Take A Lesbian To Lunch 1972

As M.E. Kerr

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! 1972
If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever? 1973
The Son of Someone Famous 1974
Is That You, Miss Blue? 1975
Love Is A Missing Person 1975
I'll Love You When You're More Like Me 1977
Gentlehands 1978
Little Little 1981
What I Really Think of You 1982
Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel 1983
Him She Loves? 1984
I Stay Near You 1985
Night Kites 1986
Fell 1987
Fell Back 1989
Fell Down 1991
Linger 1993
Deliver Us From Evie 1994
"Hello," I Lied 1997
Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing 1998
We Might as Well All Be Strangers
What Became of Her 2000
Slap Your Sides 2001
Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers 2003
Your Eyes in Stars 2006
Someone Like Summer 2007

As Mary James

Shoebag 1990
The Shuteyes 1993
Frankenlouse 1994
Shoebag Returns 1996

As Marijane Meaker

Game of Survival 1968
Shockproof Sydney Skate 1972 (reissued 2003)
Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s 2003

Short stories

"Devotedly, Patrick Henry Casebolt" 1951 as Laura Winston in Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
"Do You Want My Opinion?" 1984 in Sixteen: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
"The Sweet Perfume of Good-bye" 1988 in Visions: Nineteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
"Sunny Days and Sunny Nights" 1989 in Connections: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
"Son of One Eye" 1989 in Scope
"The Author" 1992 in Funny You Should Ask: The Delacorte Book of Original Humorous Short Stories
"We Might as Well All Be Strangers" 1994 in Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence
"The Green Killer" 1995 in Bad Behavior
"Like Father, Like Son" 1995 in Scope
Foreword 1997 in Hearing Us Out : Voices from the Gay and Lesbian Community by Roger Sutton
"I Will Not Think of Maine" 1998 in Dirty Laundry: Stories About Family Secrets
"Guess Who's Back in Town, Dear?" 1999 in Stay True : Short Stories for Strong Girls
"Grace" 2000 in I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes With Religion
Contributor to 33 Things Every Girl Should Know : Stories, Songs, Poems and Smart Talk by 33 Extraordinary Women
"Great Expectations" 2001 in On the Fringe
"Hearing Flower" 2004 in Face Relations: Eleven Stories about Seeing Beyond Color