Writer Ardath Mayhar died 1 February 2012. Born Ardath Frances Hurst on 20 February 1930, in Timpson, Texas, she won a Balrog for poetry in 1985, and named SFWA’s Author Emeritus in 2008 (see this article).
After attending high school in Nagodoches, Texas, she married Joe E. Mayhar in 1958. She ran the East Texas Bookstore, and starting in 1984, the View from Orbit Bookstore in Nagodoches (she sold the store after her husband’s death in 1998). She became a full-time writer in 1982, but had been writing her entire life.
She published in a wide variety of genres under both her own name and several pseudonyms, including Frank Cannon, Frances Hurst, and John Killdeer. Her first sf novel, How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon, appeared in 1979. Her ISFDb bibliography is on this page.
Mayhar was also an artist, and a sampling of her artwork appears on her web site.
She is survived by two sons and two stepsons.