Kimberley Snow grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina, and has lived in a number of places including North Dakota and North Carolina where she worked with J.B. Rhine at Duke University's Department of Parapsychology. She worked her way through graduate school as a chef, eventually becoming executive chef at the Kentucky Horse Center in Lexington, Ky. After completing a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, she took a job teaching in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she helped to found the Women's Studies Program. Two of her books, Writing Yourself Home (soon to be available on Kindle) and Keys to the Open Gate (Conari) grew out of her involvement with Women's Studies. Over time she moved on to teach other classes at UCSB: Writing, Science Fiction, Women's Science Fiction, and, in 2003, "The Art of Peace."

Her play, Multiple , won first prize in the 1986 Jacksonville University 17th Annual Playwrighting Contest. Dragon Soup & Other Intense Sensations, a play about restaurant life, was produced at The Mandalay restaurant in Santa Barbara which served the same meal being prepared in the play.

In early 1991, she and her husband, the poet Barry Spacks, moved to a Tibetan Buddhist community in Northern California where she spent the next six years studying Dzogchen with Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, working in the kitchen, setting up a website for the community, and editing dharma books.

She continues as a writer, teacher, and web master. In 2005 she became the administrator of the Vairotsana Foundation, Santa Barbara, and in 2007 joined Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, www.sbinstitute.com, founded by B. Alan Wallace, as their Program Director, a position she still holds. In addition to the series of "Everyday Dharma" workshops she teaches through SBI, she also leads day-long retreats on various dharma subjects through Casa de Maria. Since 2010, she and her husband have held a series of workshops and weekend retreats on various aspects of Writing and Meditation.

Her website www.quietspaces.com grew out of a UCSB class called "Choosing Peace" and provides resources for attaining inner and outer peace. She has hosted a website for Santa Barbara Buddhists since she and her husband moved back to Santa Barbara in the late '90s. www.writingyourselfhome.net is a companion to the many writing workshops that she teaches in the Santa Barbara area. She still maintains close contact with Chagdud Gonpa, a Buddhist center in Northern California where, when she goes up for retreats, she usually ends up working in the kitchen.

Photo by Barry Spacks.