Meridel Le Sueur

Meridel Le Sueur (1900, Murray, IA – 1996, Hudson, WI) was an American writer associated with the proletarian movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Like her counterparts John Steinbeck, Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy, Le Sueur wrote about the struggles of the working class during the Great Depression, publishing articles in "New Masses" and "The American Mercury." Her best known books are North Star Country (1945), a people’s history of Minnesota, and ... more

Meridel Le Sueur (1900, Murray, IA – 1996, Hudson, WI) was an American writer associated with the proletarian movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Like her counterparts John Steinbeck, Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy, Le Sueur wrote about the struggles of the working class during the Great Depression, publishing articles in "New Masses" and "The American Mercury." Her best known books are North Star Country (1945), a people’s history of Minnesota, and the novel The Girl, which was written in the 1930s but not published until 1978. In the 1950s, Le Sueur was blacklisted as a communist, but her reputation was revived in the 1970s, when she was hailed as a proto-feminist for her writings in support of women’s rights. In her later years, Le Sueur lived in St. Paul, MN, and wrote popular children’s biographies, most notably Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road. less