Olsen, Tillie (c. 1912–)

American writer. Name variations: Tillie Lerner. Born Tillie Lerner in 1912 or 1913 in Nebraska (neither the date nor the town is documented); dau. of Samuel Lerner (laborer and political activist) and Ida (Beber) Lerner; studied creative writing at San Francisco State College, 1953–54, and Stanford, 1955–56; m. Jack Olsen, 1943 (died 1989); children: Karla (b. 1932); Julie (b. 1938); Katherine Jo (b. 1943); Laurie (b. 1948).

Writer whose fiction and nonfiction speaks for those who are least represented in Western literature and who has, through her writing and life, brought to the reading public hundreds of writers who would otherwise have remained silent or unknown; with family, settled in Omaha (c. 1917); joined Young Communist League (YCL) and was jailed in Kansas City, Kansas, for organizing packinghouse workers (1932); moved to Faribault, Minnesota, to recover from 1st stages of TB; began Yonnondio (1932); settled permanently in San Francisco (1933); arrested for taking part in San Francisco Maritime Strike, wrote poetry and reportage for YCL (1934); attended American Writers Congress in NY (1935); spent next 20 years raising 4 daughters, working at a succession of low-paying jobs to help support family, participating in community, union, and political activity, and writing; won O. Henry award for year's best American short story for "Tell Me a Riddle" (1961); worked on recovered manuscript of Yonnondio and biographical interpretation of Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis (1972); published Silences (1978); was international visiting scholar, Norway; visited Soviet Union and China (1984); also wrote Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother: A Daybook and Reader (1984). May 18 declared Tillie Olsen Day in San Francisco (1981).

See also Mara Faulkner, Protest and Possibility in the Writing of Tillie Olsen (U. Press of Virginia, 1993); Pearlman and Werlock, Tillie Olsen (Twayne, 1991); Constance Coiner, Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur (Oxford U. Press, 1995); Elaine Neil Orr, Tillie Olsen and a Feminist Spiritual Vision (U. Press of Mississippi, 1987); and Women in World History.