Jeri Studebaker

At age 18 I left home hoping to become an archaeologist. Although that didn't happen I did acquire a degree in archaeology and a bit of excavating experience - at a medieval castle in Ludgerhsall, Wiltshire, England, which King John had turned into a hunting castle in 1210 AD, and at Seip Mound, a Hopewell Indian sacred site in Ross County, Ohio. 

I also took an archaeology course at Oxford University (Merton College), about Britain when the Romans ran it, and got to work in Oxford's famous Bodleian Library as well as tour some of the more magnificent of Britain's archaeological ruins (Stonehenge, for starters, and Silbury Hill). 

Although during my thirties I was a "professional student," I eventually settled down, in Maine in the U.S, into a career working with refugees. After spending most of my working career helping resettle political refugees from Poland, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries, I took an early retirement in 1999 and began writing and traveling a bit.

The highlight of my travels was a month-long trip to the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Santorini to study ancient Minoan art (and to nearly expire from delight after a month's diet of Mediterranean food, culture, wine and other exotic spirits). Santorini, which is actually the burnt-out shell of a volcano, stuns the senses: stacks of dazzling white buildings under burnt-orange roofs cling to the inside walls of the old volcano against a sky of midnight blue - and all the while the sun is shining! I haven't written my book on Minoan art yet, but I did finish the first draft of a fantasy-mystery novel set on Crete and Santorini: *Murder in a Minoan Museum*. 

In 2012 I temporarily put aside the Minoan novel to write the book *Breaking the Mother Goose Code: How a Fairy-Tale Character Fooled the World for 300 Years*. If you love Mother Goose, fairy tales and goddesses, I promise you: you'll want to pick up a copy of this book. Look for it this coming fall (2014).

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My credentials for writing include a B.A. in anthropology, an M.A. in archaeology, and completion of the coursework for a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology (after which I decided college/university teaching wasn't for me and so moved on to other things).