Barbara Clark

I was born in San Diego, California, but basically raised all over the United States; at least that's what it seemed like when I had to list the twenty-three schools I'd attended in my college application.

Most of the moving around was during World War 2 when my father's job took him to the East Coast and back again with a great two and a half years living in Tucson, Arizona. My sister, brother, and I learned to adapt to new places. We lived at the edge of the Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, fed the ducks in Fenway Park in Boston where I went to Girls Latin School, and experienced our only hurricane in Charleston, South Carolina. We also lived in New York City, then back to the San Diego area, and finally the Los Angeles, and Orange county areas of California.

Some of those years have become part of my fictional characters' backgrounds.

You'd think I'd had enough traveling and moving. Not quite. After teaching in Kindergarten and First Grade in California for five years, I took a job in Nome Alaska. It was a fantastic experience. Nome was where I tasted whale blubber (tastes sort of nut-like), had a ride in an umiak (a forty-passenger boat made out of driftwood with oogrook hide stretched over it) and walked out on the frozen Norton Sound.

Now I'm retired after thirty-four years of teaching, and excited by my new and growing career in writing.