After receiving her A.B. from the University of South Carolina in 1920, Mary Louise Jones DuBose came to Columbus. She lived with her aunt, Miss Clara Gunby, and worked as a reporter for the Enquirer, then operated by Julian and Julia Harris. After covering a prize fight, an event she dared not let her aunt know she attended, she adopted the pen name of Nancy Telfair at the suggestion of Julia Harris. In 1928, Columbus Office Supply hired Nancy Telfair to write the centennial history of Columbus. Afterwords, she left Columbus and later served as director of the Federal Writers Project in South Carolina, as a professor at the University of South Carolina, and as director of the U.S.C. Press. Throughout her various careers she continued to write. In the 1920s, her poems appeared in Ernest Hartsock's Bozart magazine, some were reprinted by the Literary Digest; her books included The Woman from Off: A One Act Play (1936), South Carolina Folktales (1941), Windstar (1943), and Enigma (1962). She returned to Columbus in 1975 to participate in a program on Women's history.