Jill Kramer was born in the North Philadelphia neighborhood known as Strawberry Mansion, where no strawberries grow and no mansions can be found. She graduated from New York University, hitchhiked through Europe, then settled in Marin county, California. She waited tables and dispatched police cars before going back to school and getting a master’s degree in psychology at Sonoma State University. She started writing in the ‘80s. She was the staff reporter at the Marin county weekly Pacific Sun for 14 years. Among the stories that she covered was a series on the dysfunctional family court system. She’s won awards from the Peninsula Press Club, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Lincoln Steffens award for Investigative Journalism. She lives in San Anselmo with her husband and two cats.