Shirley Seifert (1888–1971)

Born 1888 in St. Peters, Missouri, west of St. Louis, author Shirley Seifert lived and worked all her life in the region. Like the Brontes, Shirley and her sisters, Adele Seifert and Elizabeth Seifert Gasparotti, all wrote fiction.

Shirley studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin. While completing her graduate studies, she became interested in writing fiction. She sold her first short stories to American Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. After her success with mass marketed periodicals, in the mid-1930s, Shirley focused her work full time to writing historical novel genre fiction, a number of which were well known and well reviewed.

Besides becoming a successful author, Shirley was also instrumental in founding the St. Louis Writer's Guild in 1920. This support group of six accomplished writers in the area is still operating today.