Born a child of Hungarian immigrants, Margaret Duda grew up bi-lingual and bi-cultural. She could not speak English until she had to go to kindergarten, but then loved reading and had a poem in the National Anthology of High School Poetry at 15 and sold her first short story to a national magazine at 17. In her senior year, she wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper on school news.
She graduated from the University of Delaware, where she majored in English Literature and minored in Philosophy, winning both the Mary Healey Ford Award and the Penwoman’s Bowl award for her short fiction. She was also chosen Mademoiselle’s college representative from the University of Delaware for her articles. During summer vacations, Margaret worked as a journalist for the Delaware State News and interviewed people such as John F. Kennedy when he ran for President.
After graduation from college, marriage, and four children, she wrote short stories and articles for literary magazines such as The Kansas Quarterly, The University Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The South Carolina Review, The Green River Review, Fine Arts Discovery, and others. One of her stories made the Distinctive list of Best American Short Stories. Margaret also published over a hundred nonfiction articles and five books, had a play produced in Michigan, and since Covid, has had poems in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Silver Birch Press, Red Eft Review, and six anthologies here and abroad.
She also took travel photos for the New York Times for ten years, traveling to forty countries and thirty-eight states, and is on the fifth and final draft of a novel about an immigrant family set in a steel mill town in the Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, for which she won the Lucretia V. Simmons writing grant from the AAUW. Margaret was listed in an anthology of Who’s Who in Emerging Writers in 2021 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022.
Paperback: 122 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (June 26, 2023)
Awards:
"On the Wall Forever" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.