Science fiction and fantasy author Doris Piserchia (October 11, 1928 - September 15, 2021) was born Doris Elaine Summers in Fairmont. Her parents were Dewey, a glass plant employee, and Viola Crihfield Summers. Doris, her parents, her three sisters, and two brothers lived at 325 Brown Street for her entire 22 years in Fairmont. She discovered science fiction when she was 11 and became a fan of other sci-fi authors such as A. E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, George O. Smith, and Clifford Simak. Growing up poor during the Great Depression, she spent a lot of time in nature, later sparking her imagination for some of the creatures in her works. She said, “We had no money whatsoever, so I played in the woods, which were all around us at that time.”

She graduated from East Fairmont High School in 1946 and worked as a lifeguard while earning a teacher’s degree in physical education from Fairmont State College (now University). She never saw herself, though, as a teacher, so she joined the Navy and served throughout the Korean War. In 1953, she married Army regular Joseph Piserchia. She was honorably discharged the following year. As part of his long military career, she estimates they moved 17 times.

As her husband’s life took him around the world, including a stint in Vietnam, she began writing. In 1966, she published her first sci-fi short story, “Rocket to Gehenna,” in Fantastic Stories magazine. She later noted that she lost interest in reading science fiction about this time. Her first novel, Mister Justice, about time travel, came out in 1973. Encouraged by noted sci-fi author and editor Frederik Pohl, she published her second novel, Star Rider, a year later. In 1976, she released A Billion Days of Earth. She considered these early works, especially her short stories, to be among her finest.

One of her novels, 1982’s Blood County, released under the pseudonym Curt Selby, falls into the rather rare Appalachian vampire genre, set in imaginary Blood County, West Virginia. An avid genealogist, she chose Selby based on a “long-dead relative’s name.”

Much of her work is now considered part of the subgenre of feminist science fiction, emphasizing gender equality and women’s rights. In all, she authored 13 novels and 17 short stories—all between 1966 and 1983. She quit writing for publication after her daughter Linda Giokas died in 1984, and she had to raise her three-year-old granddaughter. In a 2000 interview, she also seemed to attribute her professional retirement to overall exasperation with the publishing business, difficulty in marketing her books, and the general reading public, who she felt gave her writing, especially her short stories, “short shrift.”

Her husband passed away in 1997, and she died in Hackensack, New Jersey, at age 92. In addition to Giokas, she was the mother to five children: John, James, Lauren, Dewey, Patricia, and Christina.