Rosalie Maggio papers , 1961-2001

Rosalie Ann Maggio (1943-2021) was a freelance editor and an award-winning author of 24 books and hundreds of articles and stories.

Born November 8, 1943, in Victoria, Texas, to Irene Cecilia Nash Maggio and Paul Joseph Maggio, D.D.S., she was the eldest of eight siblings who grew up in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She graduated from St. Edmond High School in 1961. At St. Catherine University, she majored in French and minored in history, theology, and philosophy.

Maggio was at the forefront of popularizing inclusive language and women's quotations. Her landmark work, The Nonsexist Word Finder: A Dictionary of Gender-Free Usage, published in 1987, was one of the first practical guides to using inclusive language. Maggio also collected and compiled more than 44,000 quotations from famous women, publishing eight collections of quotations and contributing to the inclusion of women's voices in the historical record.

Maggio's other books include the three-million-copy bestseller How to Say It: Choice Words, Phrases, Sentences and Paragraphs for Every Situation, a French-language biography about daredevil Marie Marvingt, books on biased language, and two children's books. She also wrote hundreds of children's stories which were published in magazines such as Highlights for Children, Jack and Jill, Cricket, and Spider. In addition to her work as a freelance editor and writer, she worked for extended periods for West Publishing, Science Research Associates, the International College of Surgeons, and American Guidance Service.

Maggio died September 18, 2021, at the age of 77, from pancreatic cancer.