Marta Haake Labus Papers

Marta Haake Labus was born on September 13, 1943, in Huntington, West Virginia. She graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University in 1965; received a Master of Arts degree in 1966 and a Ph. D. in 1971 from the University of Illinois. Labus married Otto Philleo Labus on May 10, 1982. They reside in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Labus is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Modern Language Association of America, Women in Communications, McCormick Ranch Woman's Association Career Group, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Phi. She was a Woodrow Wilson scholar in 1965, University of Illinois dissertation fellow in 1969, and held National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 1974 and 1976-1977.

Labus has always been interested in writing. As a child she spent much time writing plays and composing song lyrics. In high school she wrote radio scripts for the local Junior Theater of the Air; one script was published in The National Scholastic. During college she stopped writing except for poetry. In 1981 she began work on her first novel writing under the pseudonym Clair McCormick. Labus completed a third comedy/mystery, Murder in Cowboy Bronze in 1985.