Joan C. Stanley

Joan Carol Stanley (May 24, 1945-October 16, 2016) was an attorney and the author of Ex Libris Miskatonici, a highly detailed, scholarly mock-catalogue of the Mythos-related special collections of the Miskatonic University library.
Stanley was born in Boston to the former Lucile Duncan, a schoolteacher who moved from Alabama to Boston during World War II to be a welder in the Navy Yard, and John C. Stanley, who joined the Merchant Marine in 1919 to escape lynch mobs in Texas. Her father regretted not being able to attend college, and insisted that his children study hard and watch the nightly news.Boston Globe, "Joan Stanley; Battled Debilitating Ailment to Blaze Legal Trails," by J. M. Lawrence, November 16, 2016.
In tenth grade, she "fell in love with Lovecraft’s writing by reading At the Mountains of Madness."Ex Libris Miskatonici, by Joan C. Stanley (Necronomicon Press, 1993).
Though a member of the National Honor Society, guidance counselors talked her out of applying to college, convincing her to attend clerical school instead. Working as a secretary in a law firm, however, she realized she was at least as smart as the lawyers, and got a scholarship to Howard University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in philosophy in 1969, and then got a law degree from Northwestern University in 1972.
As a lawyer, she worked as both a public defender and as a federal prosecutor; she was the second Black woman to be an assistant US attorney.Riley-Antoine Funeral Home, "Obituary for Attorney Joan C. Stanley."She faced "considerable prejudice within the system" in the early 1970s, wrote Anthony J. Benedetti, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, but persisted with "ardent determination and a noble spirit." 
An avid science fiction and fantasy fan, Stanley was an early member of the Boston Star Trek Association; friends joked that she had a Vulcan attitude toward life. She traveled widely, studying in Japan and France and once going to Australia to attend the World Science Fiction Convention. She loved books, collecting stamps, jazz and classical music, and cats; an obituary said her sister adopted her cat Miss Kitty. She was a longtime resident of Roxbury.
She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in her early 20s; at times the pain and swelling was so great she was unable to brush her hair without her sister's help. She died from complications of the illness at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital at the age of 71.
== Selected Bibliography ==
=== Chapbooks ===
* Ex Libris Miskatonici (1993)
== External Links ==
* Joan C. Stanley at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
* Joan C. Stanley at Goodreads
==References==
Category:Deceased (Real World)
Category:Expanded Mythos Authors