Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) produced outstanding but infrequent work. Her stories are inspired by her early years in numerous Western mining towns, her glamorous adolescent years in Santiago, Chile, three failed marriages, a lifetime alcoholism problem, her years in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City, and the various professions she later did to support her writing and her four boys. During the 1990s, she was sober and writing regularly that she accepted a visiting writer's position at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was quickly promoted to associate professor. She moved to Southern California in 2001 because her health was failing and she wanted to be closer to her boys.