- Meriwether is an executive board member of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA), an NGO co-founded in 1991 by Jayne Cortez and Ama Ata Aidoo "for the purpose of establishing links between professional African women writers".
- Louise grew up in the decade of the Great Depression, a time that would deeply affect her young life and ultimately influence her as a writer.
- She attended Public School 81 in Harlem and graduated from Central Commercial High School in downtown Manhattan.
- She was an American novelist, essayist, journalist and activist, as well as a writer of biographies of historically important African Americans for children.
- She is best known for her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970), which draws on autobiographical elements about growing up in Harlem, New York City, during the Depression and in the era after the Harlem Renaissance.
- After the stock market crash of October 24, 1929, Louise's family migrated from Haverstraw to New York City. They moved to Brooklyn first, and later to Harlem.
- In the 1950's, she received a B.A. degree in English from New York University before meeting and marrying Angelo Meriwether, a Los Angeles teacher. Although this marriage and a later marriage to Earle Howe ended in divorce, Louise continues to use the Meriwether name.
- Beginning in the early 1960's, Meriwether also wrote and published articles in the Los Angeles Sentinel on African Americans such as opera singer Grace Bumbry, Attorney Audrey Boswell, and Los Angeles jurist Judge Vaino Spencer.
- Meriwether was hired by Universal Studios in the 1950's to became the first black story analyst in Hollywood's history.
- In 1967, Meriwether joined the Watts Writers' Workshop (a group created in response to the Watts Riot of 1965) and worked as a staff member of that project.
- The third of five children, Louise grew up in the decade of the Great Depression.
- She received in 2001 the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Black Writers Alliance (formerly the African American Online Writers Guild) Gold Pen Awards.
- Her first book, Daddy Was a Number Runner, a fictional account of the economic devastation of Harlem in the Great Depression, appeared in 1970 as the first novel to emerge from the Watts Writers' Workshop. It received favorable reviews from authors James Baldwin and Paule Marshall. Daddy Was a Number Runner, is a fictional account of the historical and sociological devastation of the economic Depression on Harlem residents.
- While still living in Los Angeles, working with the Watts Writers Workshop, Meriwether was approached to be editor-in-chief of a new magazine for Black women called Essence but she declined, saying she preferred to write for them, her article "Black Man, Do You Love Me?" appearing as the cover story for the magazine's first issue in May 1970.
- Meriwether wrote three historical biographies for children on civil war hero Robert Smalls (1971), pioneer heart surgeon, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1972) and civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1973).
- In 1965, Louise earned an M.A. degree in journalism from the University of California at Los Angeles.
- Louise Meriwether has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Houston.
- In addition to numerous short stories, Meriwether published novels, Fragments of the Ark (1994) and Shadow Dancing (2000).
- On June 1, 2016, the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize was announced to celebrate Meriwether's achievements and continue her legacy.
- She has been active in the peace movement for most of her life.
- She worked as a freelance reporter (1961-64) for the Los Angeles Sentinel and a black story analyst (1965-67) for Universal Studios, the first black woman hired as a story editor in Hollywood.
- She is a member of the Harlem Writers Guild.
- Meriwether taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Houston.
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