Margie Harris

Who is Margie Harris?

Margie Harris was a pulp writer from 1930-39. She was one of the most popular authors in the short-lived gang pulp genre. Even in an era of hardboiled crime fiction, her stories were unusually hard-edged and bitter. Her best work includes ingenious plotting, remorselessly violent characters, and colorful underworld argot. Most of her early stories appeared in the Harold Hersey-published pulp magazines Gangster Stories, Mobs, Prison Stories, Racketeer Stories, and Gangland Stories. When Hersey sold off his assets, Harris continued to appear in the successor to Gangster Stories, Greater Gangster Stories.

After the collapse of the gang pulps in 1934, Harris diversified into a variety of crime pulps, The Phantom Detective, Thrilling Detective, Super-Detective Stories, Popular Detective, etc. When the gang genre was temporarily revived in the late 1930s in the pulps, Double-Action Gang Magazine and Ten Story Gang, Harris was a frequent contributor. Her published output includes less than a hundred known stories, low for a pulp writer, but many of them were novelettes or short novels.

Little is known of Harris' background. It is believed that "Margie Harris" is a pseudonym.