Jenni Calder was born in Chicago, educated in the United States and England, and has lived in or near Edinburgh since 1971. After several years of part-time teaching and freelance writing, including three years in Kenya, she worked at the National Museums of Scotland successively as education officer, Head of Publications, script editor for the Museum of Scotland, and as Head of Museum of Scotland International. She has written and lectured widely on Scottish, English and American literary and historical subjects as Jenni Calder (including Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study, Scots in the USA, Scots in Canada) and writes fiction and poetry as Jenni Daiches. She has two daughters, a son and a dog.