Maureen Lapidus Falkowitz
Bewildering Stories biography
to Bewildering Stories bibliography
Maureen is a relatively new writer although she has been writing for most of her life. As a six-year-old, she had a correspondence one summer with her father via postcards when the family vacationed on Beach 80th Street in Rockaway, New York. At eleven in 1955, she wrote to the International Friendship League, Inc. in Boston, MA, and for 50 cents, she received the names of her first two pen pals, one from Steyr, Austria, and the other from Brisbane, Australia. This began a life-long hobby of correspondence and may have been the impetus to her later career as a technical writer.
After graduating from Hunter College on Park Avenue, in Manhattan, she was a grade school teacher in the NYC school system; then she became a medical claims approver for Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. at the headquarters on 23rd Street. After taking some computer science courses at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey, in the early 1980’s, she became a well-respected technical writer in the communications field in Monmouth and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey, for more than twenty-two years. Among the companies for whom she worked were AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Telcordia (formerly Bellcore), and Tellium.
In 2004, she began volunteering for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), a national, 501(c)3 charitable organization. Currently, she is the president of the Colts Neck chapter (established in 2000), and co-facilitator of the Jackson chapter (established in 2010) in New Jersey.
In 2009 and 2010, she became a volunteer contributor to Words of Wellness, the newsletter of the Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey (www.cspnj.org) Institute for Wellness and Recovery Initiatives. Her articles were about science- and health-related topics, including a 4-part series about fibromyalgia. This series is listed as a WOW Special Edition and can be found at wellac.org
In addition, Maureen has written a collection of seventy-six poems, and several essays. She has also written many family stories with historical references.
Currently, she participates in a writing group called WISE in the adult community where she lives. It is led by Michele Campbell, Ph. D. The group’s efforts to write a collection of stories called “The Jennifers” led to the writing of “Sheila and the Gypsy” that is published here. It is based on the true story of Maureen’s sister, Sheila, who died in 2009.
Maureen lives with her husband of 48 years in the Westlake Golf and Country Club in Jackson, New Jersey. Her son also lives in Jackson, New Jersey.
Copyright © 2014 by Maureen Lapidus Falkowitz
