Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900 – November 14, 1996) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mother's second husband, Arthur Le Sueur, the former Socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Her writings—including journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetry—often dealt with the everyday lives of working-class women. She wrote from a perspective shaped by Marxist and feminist ideas. Her best-known works include the 1932 essay “Women on the Breadlines” and the novel The Girl. Le Sueur’s close association with Communist organizations eventually led to her being blacklisted in the 1950s during the Cold War. This sharply reduced the amount of work she was able to publish. Interest in her work revived in the 1970s and 1980s, when scholars and second-wave feminists reassessed her contributions to American radical and feminist literature.

Meridel Le Sueur was born in Murray, Iowa, on February 22, 1900, to William Winston Wharton and Marian “Mary Del” Lucy, both of whom were involved in social and political reform movements that often required the family to relocate. Following Marian’s divorce from Meridel’s biological father, she married Arthur Le Sueur, an influential socialist lawyer and ex-Socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Arthur was instrumental in the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party. Marian Le Sueur continued her activism as a socialist, feminist, and a delegate for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Her grandfather was a supporter of the Protestant fundamentalist temperance movement, and she "grew up among the radical farmer and labor groups ... like the Populists, the Farmers' Alliance and the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World." Le Sueur was heavily influenced by poems and stories that she heard from Native American women.

Starting in her late teens, Le Sueur began writing for liberal and left-leaning newspapers, addressing issues such as unemployment, migrant labor, and Native American autonomy. Her early journalism reflected both her political awareness and her interest in the everyday struggles of working people, themes that would remain central throughout her career.

In the years following high school, Le Sueur continued exploring artistic and political worlds beyond the Midwest. "After a year studying dance and physical fitness at the American College of Physical Education in Chicago, Illinois, Meridel moved to New York City, where she lived in an anarchist commune with Emma Goldman and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts." Her acting career primarily took place in California, where she worked in Hollywood as an extra in The Perils of Pauline and Last of the Mohicans, and as a stuntwoman in silent movies. Although she would not continue acting, it expanded her interest in the telling of stories and creative work.

By the mid-1920s, she began writing for liberal and left-leaning newspapers on topics such as unemployment, migrant labor, and rights of Native Americans. It was during this period that she also joined the Communist Party, reflecting a deepening alignment with working-class politics. Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Le Sueur returned to the Midwest and settled in Minnesota. She was a contributor to New Masses and The Daily Worker. Her pieces focused on labor, poverty, and the everyday struggles of working people. These articles marked the beginning of her writing career. Her early journalism combined firsthand political involvement with a storytelling style shaped by her activist upbringing, establishing her as an emerging voice in Depression-era writing.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she taught writing classes in her mother's home on Dupont Avenue near Douglas Avenue in Minneapolis. She was something of a magnet for aspiring writers, drawing students from as far as New York City. She lived in the Twin Cities for some time.

Le Sueur wrote many notable books throughout her life. Le Suer gained recognition during the 1930s. On May 24, 1936, when New York Times editor Edward O’Brien’s published his yearly collection of best short stories, he included sixteen of Le Sueur's published short stories as either a citation or as a reprint. Her essay "I Was Marching" was reprinted three times. Her book Salute to Spring was shown in the International Publishers imprint during the 1940s, which included twelve pieces of both fiction and journalism. She also wrote several popular children's books, including the biographies, Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road, The Story of Davy Crockett, and The Story of Johnny Appleseed, and Sparrow Hawk. A Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother, one of her earliest children's books, was published in 1949. Composed of poetry, it focused on the dull life of a young girl named Billie Jo through the bleakness of Oklahoma in the 1930s. Because her communist political views shaped much of her literary work, the Cold War climate and its repression of radical writers forced Le Suer to withdraw from public life and take her work underground by shutting down many of her publishing outlets. It wasn’t until the end of the 1960s that her work became more visible again due to a better political climate and the start of the new women’s movement. A few pieces of her work were reissued in the 1970s under the title Corn Village.

Women on the Breadlines was Le Sueur’s first piece written for New Masses in 1932. The piece documents the realities of the nearly three million women who were unemployed during the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, there were long lines of people waiting for free food, known as breadlines. Le Sueur had observed that underprivileged women typically avoided these lines in order to protect their image and hide their poverty. They avoided the breadlines by pooling together their resources, selling their possessions and/or their bodies, and/or applying for relief, which was seen as humiliating for many during this time.