20th-century American women writers

Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) was an American cartoonist. She is known as the first African-American woman cartoonist and creator of the Torchy Brown comic strip and the Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger panel.

Sarah Margaret Hodges née Moore (July 26, 1911 – December 13, 2005) was an American writer of children's books, librarian, and storyteller.
Sarah Margaret Moore was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to Arthur Carlisle Moore and Annie Marie Moore. She enrolled at Tudor Hall, a college preparatory school for girls. A 1932 graduate of Vassar College, she arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband Fletcher Hodges Jr. when in 1937 he became curator at the Stephen Foster Memorial. She trained as a librarian at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, under Elizabeth Nesbitt, and she volunteered as a storyteller at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1958 with One Little Drum, she wrote more than 40 published books. She also wrote the book John F. Kennedy Voice of Hope. In 1953, she was hired as the storyteller for a radio show called Let's Tell A Story. It became the storytelling segment, "Tell Me a Story", for Fred Rogers' children's television show at WQED, which ran from the mid-1960s to 1976 (the first run of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood).
Illustrator Trina Schart Hyman won the annual Caldecott Medal for the 1985 picture book Saint George and the Dragon written by Hodges. Two more of her well-known works are What's for Lunch, Charley?, and Merlin and the Making of the King.
She was a professor of library science at the University of Pittsburgh, where she retired in 1976.
Hodges died of heart disease December 13, 2005, at her home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. She suffered from Parkinson's disease.She wrote her stories on a notepad or a typewriter. "I need good ideas, and they don't come out of machines", she once said.

Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ellen Hulda Johnson (1910–1992) was a distinguished art historian and professor of modern art at Oberlin College from 1945 to 1977, an organizer of important exhibitions, and an influential critic of contemporary American art.

Musa Jane McKim Guston (née McKim; August 23, 1908 – March 30, 1992), was a painter and poet. Born in Oil City, Pennsylvania, McKim spent much of her youth in Panama. During the Great Depression, she worked under the Section of Fine Arts, painting murals in public buildings, including a Post Office building in Waverly, New York. She was the wife of New York School artist Philip Guston, whom she met while attending the Otis Art Institute. In cooperation with him, she painted a mural in a United States Forest Service building in Laconia, New Hampshire, and panels which were placed aboard United States Maritime Commission ships. After her painting career, she wrote poetry, publishing her work in small literary magazines. Along with her husband and daughter, she lived in Iowa City, Iowa and New York City, eventually settling in Woodstock, New York. Her younger sister was Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim (1910-1992).

Nancy Hamilton (July 27, 1908 - February 18, 1985) was an American actress, playwright, lyricist, director and producer.

Hildegarde Dolson Lockridge (1908–1981) was a prolific writer whose career spanned nearly fifty years. Her work appeared in major magazines, plus she was the author of fifteen books—all published under her maiden name of Hildegarde Dolson.

Heloise Bowles Cruse (May 4, 1919 – December 28, 1977) was the original author of the popular syndicated newspaper column "Hints from Heloise."Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Bowles married Marshal (Mike) Holman Cruse, a United States Air Force captain (later colonel) in 1946. Their daughter Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse, born in 1951, is the current "Heloise".Bowles Cruse had been exchanging hints with neighboring stay-at-home-wives. While at a party she mentioned her wish to start a newspaper column where housewives could share hints. A colonel with two degrees in journalism laughed and bet her $10 she couldn’t get a newspaper job, for she was "nothing but a housewife." The next day she went to the offices of the Honolulu Advertiser and convinced the editor to try her column on a 30-day, no-pay basis.The original column was first published as "Readers' Exchange" in 1959. In 1961, King Features syndicated it as "Hints from Heloise"; nearly 600 newspapers carried the column, and, at the time of her death, it was one of three most popular (in terms of syndication) in the United States.Her book Heloise's Housekeeping Hints, published by Prentice-Hall, Inc., was, at half a million copies total, one of the top 10 selling hardcover books in 1963. The book later became the fastest selling paperback in the history of its publisher Pocket Books.

Betsy Drake (September 11, 1923 – October 27, 2015) was an American actress, writer and psychotherapist. She was the third wife of actor Cary Grant.

Ruth McCue Bell Graham (June 10, 1920 – June 14, 2007) was a Chinese-born American Christian author, most well known as the wife of evangelist Billy Graham. She was born in Qingjiang, Jiangsu, Republic of China, the second of five children. Her parents, Virginia Leftwich Bell and L. Nelson Bell, were medical missionaries at the Presbyterian Hospital 300 miles (480 km) north of Shanghai. At age 13 she was enrolled in Pyeng Yang Foreign School in Pyongyang, Korea, where she studied for three years. She completed her high school education at Montreat, North Carolina, while her parents were there on furlough. She graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
The Grahams met at Wheaton College and were married in the summer of 1943, shortly after their graduation. Ruth Graham became a minister's wife for a brief period in Western Springs, Illinois. She lived out the rest of her life in Montreat, North Carolina. The Grahams have five children: Virginia (Gigi), Anne, Ruth, Franklin, and Nelson Edman (Ned), 19 grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren.
Graham wrote a number of books, including some co-authored with her daughter Gigi Graham.