Isobel Carr has a BA in philosophy, with minors in history and creative writing (Hollins College) and an MFA in creative writing (San Francisco State University). Combine all that with $3.25 and you can buy a spicy chai at her favorite coffee shop. After finishing graduate school, it became painfully clear that a job in the arts wasn't going to pay enough to eat, so she set about looking for a "real" job, ending up as an international trade consultant (basically, fighting with lawyers for a living). When she is not doing that, she is usually writing, though she very occasionally still takes a day to go to a historical re-enactment, in the name of research of course.