Clara Sneed was born in Texas and never got over her it, despite a peripatetic childhood that landed her in California. She earned a BA and an MA 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.

Sneed’s historical fiction novel Before We Turn to Dust is Sneed’s first novel acquired by Blue Handle Publishing, and is set to release in October 2024. Her non-fiction account, Because This is Texas, was published in the 1999 Panhandle Plains Historical Review. Sneed and her husband split their time between Berkeley and Milam County, Texas.