Ardath Frances Hurst Mayhar (February 20, 1930 – February 1, 2012) was an American writer and poet. Mayhar wrote over 60 books ranging from science fiction to horror to young adult to historical to westerns. Some of her novels appeared under pseudonyms such as Frank Cannon, Frances Hurst, and John Killdeer. Mayhar began writing fantasy with a story in 1973, and fantasy novels in 1979 after returning with her family to Texas from Oregon. Mayhar also wrote Through a Stone Wall: Lessons from Thirty Years of Writing.

Personal life

Mayhar was born at Timpson, Texas, and was first inspired to write by finding Arthur Merritt's fantasy The Face in the Abyss (1931) on a remote rural news-stand at age 15. Mayhar wrote in 1985: Mayhar left the dairy farm to run a bookstore., The View From Orbit Bookstore in Nacogdoches, Texas, with her husband Joe. She later sold the bookstore, which served the students of Stephen F. Austin State University and people in the East Texas area, providing books that would otherwise have been unavailable locally.

Work

She moved back to Texas to become a fantasy and science-fiction writer, and lived on a place bordering the Attoyac River as it entered the Sam Rayburn Lake, which is in the Big Thicket country (today just outside the official Big Thicket National Preserve). Her juvenile novels (what would now be called 'young adult') were divided between her 'East Texas' series with regional settings, and her fantasy works for that age group. She often featured strong-minded and morally-certain adolescent girl heroines at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. Until her health began to fail, her reputation was such that she still spoke regularly in the area, drawing large crowds. Joe R. Lansdale wrote "Ardath Mayhar writes damn fine books!"

Papers

The main collection of her papers is the Ardath Mayhar Papers at the East Texas Research Center of the Stephen F. Austin State University. There is also an Ardath Mayhar Papers collection at The University of Southern Mississippi.

Awards

Mayhar was nominated for the Mark Twain Award, and won the Balrog Award for a horror narrative poem in Masques I, and had numerous other nominations for awards in almost every fiction genre, and won many awards for poetry.