Claire M. Johnson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in history. Upon applying to graduate school, she received a letter congratulating her upon being accepted and, by the way, there wouldn’t be any jobs anywhere throughout the contiguous United States after graduation. Switching gears, she indulged a lifelong passion for making and eating desserts and applied to the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. She was accepted and completed their sixteen-month course in 1983. 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. Johnson’s first novel Beat Until Stiff, for which she won the 1999 Malice Domestic Writers Grant. She is now working on her second novel, Roux Morgue. 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.