From furious to feminist

Georgia Ann Mullen wasn’t always a feminist, but in 1971 something happened at work one day that crawled under her skin and started to itch.  Georgia’s first employer fired a woman for being pregnant. “She should have known better” than to apply for the position, said the HR director—a female.

Georgia never forgot the surprise of suddenly not seeing that young woman at her desk. Nor the shock of learning why she’d been abruptly terminated.

Years later, as editor of a magazine in western New York that ran articles on the Erie Canal and local history, Georgia visited Seneca Falls to prepare a story on the town and its unique women’s rights heritage.

A tour of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s house, peppered with funny stories about her yellow floors and absent husband, sparked the germ of a plot for A Shocking & Unnatural Incident. More inspiring were a walk along the Cayuga-Seneca Canal towpath as well as visits to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and the remains of the Wesleyan Chapel, now a monument to the 1848 First Woman’s Rights Convention.

Georgia’s second book, Wixumlee Is My Salvation, will be published in 2010. She is writing the third book in the Canal Tales Series, Beau Maas at Stop 99, at her home in Wilmington, North Carolina.

A short biography

Georgia Ann Mullen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in a neighborhood where some kids still attended evening Polish school. Georgia’s paternal grandmother was born in Cleveland and “went to the woolen mill” when she was 13. Her maternal grandmother was 16 when she traveled alone to the United States. The Polish gypsy in Wixumlee Is My Salvation is named Mariana after this brave young woman.

Georgia received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University. She was a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and editor in New York and Massachusetts before moving to North Carolina. She and George Mullen have four children.