Marie Warder

Warder's first editor was once heard to say that his young protégée must have been born with printer's ink in her veins for her journalistic "career" began at the age of nine when she won first prize in a province-wide essay competition launched by the administrator of what was then known as "the Orange Free State" in South Africa. The subject she chose was "The Natural Order of Lepidoptera" and the prize was a Queen Victoria silver penny of the kind given to deserving poor people as part of a religious ceremony held on the Thursday before Easter.

In February 1939, having already written a play, The Secret of the Kennels for the SABC children's program Young Ideas the previous year, Warder began writing stories for local newspapers, selling her first story to the Cape Argus at age 12.[5] In 1944, she had had two stories published in the British magazine Everybody's and later wrote for several South African periodicals.

By 17, she was also the chief reporter for the Germiston Advocate. In this role, Warder was reportedly the youngest chief reporter in the world.[6] Warder had the chance to interview, among others, Pat Boone,[7] Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts and Frances Steloff, founder of New York's Gotham Book Mart in 1920.[8]

Warder's journalism career is most noted for her numerous pamphlets and articles on the subject of hemochromatosis.

While still living in South Africa, Warder took to writing fiction. She is the author of twenty-four novels,[9][10] written in English and Afrikaans;[11] three of which were used for some years as required reading in South African schools.[lower-alpha 1] Many of her stories take place in and around newspaper offices.

Warder's biography is included in the Archives of the National Council of Women among "Notable Women of Johannesburg".[13]

Late in 2003, Warder returned to novel writing. Storm Water and With no remorse… were released simultaneously less than a year later. In late 2010, Warder was working on her 23rd book: an updated version of Penny of the Morning Star, a novel she had originally written in South Africa in the 1960s as a part of a training course in English as a second language.[12] Her latest book, April in Portugal, was released late in May 2011, and she currently writes a series of "Little Kindle Tales for Little People."

Tom Warder, Marie's husband, whose fight with hemochromatosis was the catalyst for her crusade against this disorder.

In 1975, Warder's husband, Tom, who had been seriously ill for eight years, was finally diagnosed with hemochromatosis at the age of 50,[14] and died in 1992.[15] In 1979 their daughter, then 32, was also diagnosed with hemochromatosis. Warder concluded that the disorder was hereditary and that much of what she had been told about it was incorrect: women could indeed develop hemochromatosis, and it was not only a disorder of middle-age. Warder made it her mission to make the world aware of this disorder, including an interview with Ida Clarkson on CHEK television.[16] For more than 28 years after that, except for a series of travel articles, Warder devoted her literary efforts to works about hemochromatosis. During this time she wrote The Bronze Killer,[17][18] the first devoted entirely to the subject of the genetic disorder hemochromatosis. The term "Bronze Killer" has been used, among others, in the Toronto Star,[19] in British newspapers, in the magazine supplement of the Johannesburg Sunday Express[20] and in a Quebec French issue of the Reader's Digest, where it is called "La tueuse au masque du bronze".[21] Hemochromatosis was referred to as "the bronze killer" in an editorial by Clement Finch, Professor of Medicine Emeritus of the University of Washington, in the Western Journal of Medicine, September 1990.[22]

Warder went on to found hemochromatosis societies in South Africa and Canada.[2][3]

Warder has also published more than 300 articles on the subject of hemochromatosis, as well as patient literature for individuals, hospitals and other medical facilities. Her newsletters and brochures have gone out to more than 16 countries.[3]

In addition to her activities as a writer and activist, Warder has been an educator, founding and serving as the first principal of Windsor House Academy, a "dual-medium" school in Kempton Park, South Africa; and a musician, playing piano and clavioline with her husband's band.[23] and, late in life, a lay chaplain at the Delta Hospital in Ladner, British Columbia.[24]

English

• Warder, Marie (2003). Storm Water. Stories from South Africa Series. Maple Lane Publishing. ISBN 978-0-921966-05-0.
• Warder, Marie (2003). With No Remorse. Stories from South Africa Series. Dromedaris Books. ISBN 978-0-921966-03-6.
• Warder, Marie (2004). When You Know -- that You Know, that You Know!. Stories from South Africa. Vol. 3. Maple Lane Publishing. ISBN 978-0-921966-09-8.
• Warder, Marie (2004). Tarnished Idols. Stories from South Africa. Dromedaris Books. ISBN 978-0-921966-07-4.
• Warder, Marie (2006). Dominic Verwey Samaritan of the Sahara. Stories from South Africa. Vol. 5. Booksurge Llc. ISBN 978-0-9733625-0-3.
• Warder, Marie (2007). The Yardstick. Stories from South Africa Series. Booksurge Llc. ISBN 978-0-9733625-1-0.
• Warder, Marie (2010). Penny of the Morning Star: The Story of a Girl Reporter in the Nineteen Forties. Stories from South Africa. Maple Lane Publishing.
• Warder, Marie (2011). April in Portugal. Dromedaris Books. ISBN 978-0-9733625-4-1.

Afrikaans

• Warder, Marie (1953). Klei-Voete [Feet of Clay]. Die Goeie Hoop Uitgewers. ASIN B0040MIFXS.
• Warder, Marie (1954). Samaritaan van die Sahara [Samaritan of the Sahara]. Johannesburg: Dagbreek-Boekkring. OCLC 37484386.
• Warder, Marie (1959). Niemand so Blind [None So Blind]. Johannesburg: Dagbreek-Boekkring. OCLC 36230980.
• Warder, Marie (1961). Deur sonskyn en skaduwee [Through Sunshine and Shadow]. Johannesburg: Dagbreek-Boekkring. OCLC 504531563.
• Warder, Marie (1963). Die maatstok [The Dipstick]. Johannesburg: Dagbreek-Boekkring. OCLC 14643120.

• Warder, Marie (1989). The Bronze Killer: The Story of a Family's Fight Against a Very Common Enemy - Hemochromatosis. Imperani Publishers Publishers. ISBN 0-88925-885-6. (Updated in 2000 as The Bronze Killer: New Edition (Dromedaris Books, ISBN 9780968735800) including "Iron: The Other Side of the Story", a layman's guide to hemochromatosis)