Eve Merriam was born 19 July, 1916 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eve Merriam attended Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania (A.B., 1937), University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University. Merriam has lived most of her adult life in New York City. In the 1940s she worked as a copywriter, network radio writer, and writer and editor. She also conducted a radio program on modern poetry. Later she was a teacher at City College, New York and a public lecturer. Merriam, a prolific and versatile writer, published her first book, FAMILY CIRCLE, in 1946, it is a collection of verse for adults. Her main interests are poetry, women in society, and exploring language through word origins. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, and she has also written several picture books. Although she prefers poetry as the best form of communication, she is also the author of several plays and has been very active in the theatre since the early 1970s. In 1971, the play, INNER CITY, adapted from her book, THE INNER CITY MOTHER GOOSE, opened on Broadway. She went on to direct plays in the 1980s as well as to continue to write fiction and verse. Eve Merriam is a member of the Author's Guild, Merriam has won several awards, including the Yale Younger Poets Prize for FAMILY CIRCLE (1945), Collier's Star Fiction Award for MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN (1949), the William Newman Poetry Award (1957) and a CBS grant to write poetic drama (1959). Eve Merriam died in 1992.
