Stories of Washington State Food Editors
Columbia Magazine just accepted my pitch about Washington State food editors. (My 2010 article about women’s page journalist Bobbi McCallum was published in Columbia.)
I am going to be writing about three of Washington’s food editors: Prudence Penny at the Seattle P-I, Dorothy Neighbors at the Seattle Times and Dorothy Dean at the Spokesman-Review – they are all pen names.
What makes this work a challenge was the use of pen names. I want to know who these women actually were. For example, the food editors at the Spokane Spokesman-Review used the pen name “Dorothy Dean” for decades, with several women sharing the continuous byline. The first woman serving in that role was Estelle Calkins, who eventually left not because she married but to become a college professor. The next, Edna Mae Enslow Brown, did leave after two years when she married and started a family. Emma States wrote as Dorothy Dean during the war years, from 1941 to 1946, before leaving for a job in Seattle. Verle Ashlock was the next Dorothy Dean, leaving after one year because she married and went to work at the university while her husband completed his college degree. In 1948, home economist Dorothy C. Raymond took over the position of “Dorothy Dean” until she retired in 1957.
