The evil wizard could be placated, however, if Clarissa succeeded in a magnificent quest to the strange realm of The Workforce. And so Clarissa set upon her journey, which included many stops along the way. One was The Ohio State University, where she graduated with a BA in English and was also nominated for the prestigious Joseph V. Denney Award in English studies. Another was Harvard University, where, as a graduate student in creative writing, she studied with Master Paul Harding, who has had the grand Pulitzer Prize bestowed upon him. When Clarissa found herself in The Workforce, she became a copywriter and editor for websites and prominent guilds like Coca-Cola Enterprises. At times she ventured onto the troubadour stage, singing at the Bowery Poetry Club and on the indie rock-jazz album Serve With Straw, by Diane Taber & Sunspots. To this day, she is a proud member of the National Writers Union and volunteers with Rochester Women’s Network. Clarissa spent ten years as a freelance literary editor; but despite all this, her stories never truly left. They visited her at night and on weekends, and Clarissa wrote and wrote, and one day, when she at last published her first novel, Christmas In Whimsy, the evil wizard was fully transformed into a magic quill, which wasn’t helpful at all because who uses quills anymore? It sits on Clarissa’s desk next to her computer, where she types her next novel and posts for her blog, Pollyanna’s Library, and her online serial, Sketches from the Café Confictura.
