Maney is famous for the quote "For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian."
Mabel was born in New Jersey. Her family moved to the midwest where she was educated and permanently scarred by dour nuns. She was one of five children in an Irish Catholic family in Appleton, Wisconsin where she worked in her family's paper hat factory. She graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in Journalism and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco State University. Her MFA thesis explored the subtext of novels featuring 1940s heroine Nurse Cherry Ames.[1]
^Keehnen, Owen (1995). "glbtq.com". The Case of the Oh-So-Successful Sequel: Nancy Drew and Beyond--A Talk with Mabel Maney. Archived from the original on September 28, 2012. Retrieved August 15, 2012.