Margaret Cheney

Margaret Cheney is the author of two acclaimed biographies of the Serbo-American scientist Nikola Tesla, the first being “Tesla - Man Out of Time,” a work in continuous publication for more than a quarter century, for which she was awarded the Tesla Gold Medal of the Serbian Academy of Science and the Nikola Tesla Foundation.

Other works include “Why: The Serial Killer in America” a chilling biography of serial killer Edmund Kemper, known as the Co-ed Killer; “Midnight at Mabel’s – The Mabel Mercer Story” which chronicles biracial cabaret singer Mercer; and her first book, “Meanwhile Farm,” an autobiographical account of her departure from urban living to a challenging and humorous new beginning in a rural setting known as The Swamp of the Hawk.

Margaret Cheney was born on April 5, 1921 in Eugene, Oregon, and moved at the age of two with her family to a small farm town in western Washington. Her mother, a school teacher, taught her five children to read before they entered public school. Her father, a racer and trainer of horses, departed each spring with his sulky and Dr. Bob, a black pacer, for county fairs in the Pacific Northwest and California. Margaret entered first grade at age five, the only student in her class in a one-room schoolhouse, was promptly promoted and began to foreshadow her career in journalism by publishing these and other events in hand-printed newspapers.

She worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for the Seattle Bureau of the Associated Press before traveling widely with her husband in the Middle East and Europe. They resided in Saudi Arabia and England before returning to California. In the tumultuous 1960s, she joined the staff of the president of the University of California as a public relations writer, later working for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.