Terry Morris was a freelance magazine writer and former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors

American Society of Journalists and Authors

The American Society of Journalists and Authors was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is an organization of independent nonfiction writers in the United States...

. She also wrote short stories and published several books. She was the mother of former political consultant Dick Morris

Dick Morris

Dick Morris is an American political author and commentator who previously worked as a pollster, political campaign consultant, and general political consultant....

.

Biographical details

Morris was born in New York City and was a graduate of Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

, where she received both a B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 and an M.A.

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 Before embarking on a writing career in 1945, she taught in the New York City Public Schools.

In 1967, McCall's

McCall's

McCall's was a monthly American women's magazine that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of 8.4 million in the early 1960s. It was established as a small-format magazine called The Queen in 1873...

magazine published her exclusive interview with Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva , later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife...

, daughter of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

. Morris also had articles published in Redbook

Redbook

Redbook is an American women's magazine published by the Hearst Corporation. It is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.-History:...

, Readers Digest and Cosmopolitan. She was one of the early proponents of the confessional human interest story

Human interest story

A human interest story is a feature story that discusses a person or people in an emotional way. It presents people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about interest or sympathy in the reader or viewer....

and said she took “considerable license with the facts that are given to me.”

Her last book, published posthumously by her son, was called Confessions of a Freelance Writer: How I Got Started. In it, she describes herself as a "garbage pail" collecting casual remarks from others and shaping them into human interest stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

She was married to Eugene J. Morris and was the mother of Dick Morris.

Publications (selected list)

• No Hiding Place (1942) Alfred A. Knopf
• Prose by Professionals: The Inside Story of the Magazine Article Writer's Craft (1961) Doubleday
• Confessions of a Freelance Writer: How I Got Started (2001) iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 0595199526