Sylvia Wright Mitarachi was born Sylvia Wright on January 21, 1917, to Austin Tappan Wright and Margaret "Margot" T. Stone Wright in Berkeley, California. Her father was a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Her mother was the niece of pianist Amy Fay. She was one of four children. She married Paul J. Mitarachi and the couple had one son, John Paul, in 1962.
Mitarachi was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. Following graduation, Mitarachi edited and prepared for publication her father's book, Islandia . During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information and, following the war, for the United States Information Service, known in the United States as the United States Information Agency. During the 1950s, Mitarachi was an editor at Harper's Bazaar and contributed numerous articles. A collection of her articles was published in 1957 under the title Get Away from Me with Those Christmas Gifts . In 1969, she published the a collection of three novellas, A Shark Infested Rice Pudding .
In 1977, Mitarachi became a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. During this time she continued research on her biography of her great aunt, Melusina Fay Peirce, an early feminist, author, and founder of the Cambridge Co-operative Housekeeping Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following her fellowship year, she continued her research for the book. Mitarachi died of cancer on May 9, 1981, leaving the biography of Peirce unfinished.
From the guide to the Papers of Sylvia Wright Mitarachi, 1834-1990, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
