Miriam Michelson

Raised in Virginia City, Nevada, a gold-mining boomtown, to a secular family recently arrived from Poland, Miriam Michelson and her siblings were well educated. Her older brother Albert was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in the natural sciences (physics, 1907). In the 1890s, Michelson moved to San Francisco, where she contributed to English newspapers as a reporter and critic. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, she did not write on the “woman’s page”; instead, much of her coverage was of politics, especially women’s rights and social justice—she interviewed Emma Goldman and profiled Susan B. Anthony, among others. In addition to reporting, Michelson wrote short stories and fiction, some of which were adapted in Hollywood; her breakout short story “In the Bishop’s Carriage” (1904) was the basis for two different films. Michelson emphasized strong female characters in her writing and included a diversity of identities, including Native Americans, Jews, and immigrants from China and Ireland.