[3] Her feminist work is documented in From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk About Their Lives, edited by Sherna B.
Many of her science fiction stories first appeared in Boucher's magazine and dealt with themes like nuclear devastation, alienation, and changing sexual roles.
She edited an anthology of stories mixing science fiction with mystery called Space, Time, and Crime.
[8] DeFord died February 22, 1975, aged 86, at her longtime home,[9] the Ambassador Hotel at 55 Mason Street in San Francisco.
[10] In 2008, The Library of America selected deFord's story of the Leopold and Loeb trial for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.