Claire M Johnson

Claire M. Johnson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in history.

Armed with a whip and a knife-roll, she worked as a pastry chef for eight years in San Francisco and Oakland during the height of the food revolution. The passion and frenzied pace characterizing the food scene on the West Coast during the 1980s is well documented in Ms. Johnsons first novel Beat Until Stiff, for which she won the 1999 Malice Domestic Writers Grant.

Ms. Johnson stopped cooking professionally when her children were born and is currently an editor at U.C. Berkeley. She lives in Lafayette, California, with her husband, Mark, two children, Emma and Paul, and numerous animals. Eating at restaurants is still her favorite hobby, with her most severe criticism reserved for the dessert menu.