Carol Sklenicka

Carol Sklenicka grew up in Santa Maria, California in the 1950s and 1960s. She became an English major at California State Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo, then studied literature at the University of Leicester in England, the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont, and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she earned a PhD under the direction of Naomi Lebowitz and Howard Nemerov. She met poet R. M. Ryan in St. Louis and together they moved to his native Wisconsin to work and begin a family. Sklenicka combined an old interest in D. H. Lawrence with her new fascination with children in her first published book, a literary study of children in modern fiction called D. H. LAWRENCE AND THE CHILD. Sklenicka also wrote award-winning short stories that were published in literary journals; that process led her to her second book project, a biography of short-story master Raymond Carver, which came out in 2009. RAYMOND CARVER: A WRITER'S LIFE was named one of the "Best 10 Books of 2009" by The New York Times Book Review, and one of the best 100 books of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian, The Seattle Times, and The Washington Post. Sklenicka now lives with Ryan in northern California, where she completed another literary biography that explores the drama of women and men in the twentieth century, a life of San Francisco novelist and short story writer Alice Adams called ALICE ADAMS: PORTRAIT OF A WRITER. (Photo #2 of Carol Sklenicka and Richard Cortez Day by Stilson Snow.)