Before becoming a teacher and writer--the vocations that have identified her for most of her adult life--Elizabeth Claman pursued a number of different interests. In 1969 She earned a BFA in painting from Cal Arts (then called Chouinard). She worked in New York as a researcher for NBC (1966-67), and in Hollywood as a script reader, film production assistant, stylist for TV commercials, actress and model (1970-'76). Those Hollywood years are the basis for her novel, "The Prodigal Wife."In 1986 she earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, in 1997, a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. During those years, she published a poetry chapbook, "Peripheral Visions" (Five Fingers Press, 1989), won the Grand Prize in the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Competition judged by Diane Wakoski (also 1989), and received two grants from Oregon Literary Arts (1991 and 1994). In 1992 she co-translated with Steven Rendall "History and Memory" by Jacques LeGoff (Columbia University Press). Her poems and short stories appeared in numerous "litmags," such as River Styx, Hubbub, The Galley Sail Review, Bastard Review, The Napa Review, Fireweed, Alaska Quarterly Review and Many Mountains Moving, in two Milkweed Editions anthologies, "Outsiders" and "Night Out," and in "Intimate Kisses" (New World Library, 2001), among others. Between 1992-1997, she served on the editorial board for both fiction and poetry for The Northwest Review and edited the anthologies, "Each in Her Own Way," "Writing Our Way Out of the Dark," "Hard Love," and "Passionate Lives," all from Queen of Swords Press. As an educator for almost 30 years, Claman taught English, creative writing, art, comparative literature and French at many different levels. She is now retired from teaching and lives in Richmond, California, where she works full time as a writer. Since beginning her retirement, she has published three novels "The Prodigal Wife" (2009), "Identity Blues" (2010) and "Heat Lightning"(2013), in addition to a collection of poems, "Where the Women Are Flying" (2011). She is currently at work on a volume of autobiographical vignettes.