Born in Catford, England, Carolyn grew up in southern California, where she studied art and psychology at UCLA. In 1980 she moved to her cliff-side home high above the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, where she studies, writes, and paints amidst the surrounding wilderness.

A passion for creative expression and a lifelong fascination with spiritual transformation have ignited Carolyn to become an award-winning poet, writer, and artist. Her 10 books have been used as inspirational texts in universities and healing centers, and are featured along with the writings of seven other acclaimed woman writers in a permanent course, “The Other Half of the Sky: Eight Woman Writers,” taught at Swansea University in Wales. Carolyn’s books have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and her first book, Climates of the Mind, was translated into Braille by the Library of Congress. Her writings have been translated into Korean, Romanian, Arabic, and Bulgarian. Psyche of Mirrors: A Promenade of Portraits, a collection of fables, essays, poetry, and full-color artwork, will be published in early spring, 2012. Writers who have inspired Carolyn include Benjamin De Casseres, Benedict de Spinoza, Lao Tzu,  Nikos Kazantzakis, DH Lawrence, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Anais Nin, Laura Huxley, John Hall Whitlock, Vince Clemente, Peter Thabit Jones, David W. Dunn, Harold Bloom, Leonard Cohen, Stanley H. Barkan, John Dotson, and David J. Brown.

Over the past two decades, Carolyn has created an extensive and diverse body of paintings and drawings, ranging in style from romantic figurative to abstract. The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University exhibited a retrospective of Carolyn’s paintings and drawings in 2008 and published an exhibition catalog, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld: Visions from Big Sur, with art from the exhibit and a commentary by museum curator and director, Michael Zakian, PhD. Carolyn’s art is featured internationally in galleries, museums, private collections, and multimedia presentations. Artists who have inspired Carolyn include Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollack.