Clara Sneed was born in Texas and never got over it, despite a peripatetic childhood that landed her in California.She earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in English literature at UC Berkeley, raised a son, managed IT systems for a San Francisco law firm, and had a successful second career as a tutor for writing and Spanish-all the while working on her own writing.Though she began as a poet, she loves complex historical stories that require a lot of research. The events depicted in her debut novel Before We Turn to Dust (Blue Handle Publishing, December 2024) more than qualify. Her nonfiction account Because This is Texas, was first published in the 1999 Panhandle-Plains Historical Review and was republished by Blue Handle Publishing in June 2025.Sneed and her husband split their time between Berkeley and Milam County, Texas.