Her debut novel Cousin to Human was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1960, telling the story of a girl growing up in Louisville.[1] Florence Crowther's review of the book in The New York Times describes how "less adept" authors would have been challenged to make the story believable, but that "Miss Mayhall is a wise author - she has Lacy keep her mouth shut and yet be understood."[3] Her husband's Eakins Press published her 1966 book of plays, poems and stories Ready for the Ha Ha & Other Satires, and the two-volume collection of poetry Givers and Takers that was published in 1968 and 1973.[1]
Her collection of poems Sleeping Late on Judgment Day was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004 when she was 85 years old. Many of the works included in the book reflected her grief after the death of her husband, described by Andy Bruner of The New York Times as including "pain so private in its specificity that it threatens to repel the reader's empathy", while other pieces she "turns away from her sorrow and offers poems with philosophical insights into love and its inevitable loss".[4]
Mayhall died at age 90 on March 17, 2009, in her Manhattan home. She had no immediate survivors.[1]
