Martha
Leslie Allen is the Director of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
(WIFP), an organization founded by Donna Allen in 1972. In 1974 she began working
with WIFP. She obtained her M.A. from Howard University in 1978, writing her
thesis on "Black Women Journalists and the Black Press in the South at the Turn
of the Century." In 1988 she received her Ph.D. in history, also from Howard
University. Her doctoral dissertation is on the history of women's media. Between
1979 and 1982, she served on the editorial board of The Potomac Review,
Journal of History and Politics. She edited and published The Celibate
Woman Journal, from 1982 through 1988. She also edited the 1983 issue of
The Artemis Path, A Journal of Self-Transformation. Beginning
in 1975, she edited 15 annual editions of an international Directory of Women's
Media, and has once again resumed editing that publication. These days she
is often at work in cyberspace expanding the WIFP web site (www.wifp.org).