Carolyn See was the author of ten books, including the memoir, Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America, an advice book on writing, Making a Literary Life, and the novels There Will Never Be Another You and The Handyman.
She was the Friday-morning reviewer for The Washington Post, and she has been on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle and PENWest International. She won both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Getty Center fellowship. She lived in Pacific Palisades, California.
See also wrote books under the pen name Monica Highland, a name she shared with two others, her daughter Lisa See and her longtime companion, John Espey, who died in 2000.
See was known for writing novels set in Los Angeles and co-edited books that revolve around the city, including a book of short stories, LA Shorts, and the pictorial books Santa Monica Bay: Paradise by the Sea: A Pictorial History of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga & Malibu, and The California Pop-Up Book, which celebrates the city's unique architecture.
Damn, wrote the review, site seems to have lost it. Not repeating.
Carolyn See's final words in book:
"...there's something to be said for free fall, the wild life. It's ruined us, but it's helped to save us too. It's given us our stories; and made us who we are. It has to do with dreaming, inventing, imagining, yearning, and there's more of it--like blue smoke--in the American Dream than we're ever, ever, going to be able to acknowledge or admit."