BIOGRAPHY

Clarissa McNair was born in Mississippi and received a B.A. from Briarcliff College in American history. She is a published novelist, memoirist and true crime writer. See www.mcnairwrites.com and detectivesdontwearseatbelts.com.

In Toronto, McNair was a researcher for the CBC-TV documentary, Connections, the ten-hour series on organized crime which won many awards and received a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.

In Rome, she worked at Radio Vaticana as a news writer, on-air newscaster and producer of documentaries. She may have been the only non-Catholic at the Vatican. On weekends, McNair was the evening news anchor for WROM-TV.

Her contribution with Charles Hill, internationally recognized stolen art recovery expert, to a book called THE ART BUSINESS was a chapter called Art and Crime. Hill wrote about stolen art and McNair wrote about intellectual property, fakes, the looting of archaeological sites and smuggling. THE ART BUSINESS is now used as a textbook for the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London.

McNair’s writing experience ranges from all phases of script development while living in Beverly Hills to her present radio show in France. Basic Black, “vignettes of crime, scandal and death”is broadcast every day on World Radio Paris.

Professional memberships include: PEN AMERICA, THE AUTHORS GUILD, MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA and NEW YORK WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION . She is the former deputy vice president of the ASSOCIATION OF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS U.S.A., and serves on the board of WORLD RADIO PARIS.

A person of great curiosity, she has traveled extensively and spent time in such diverse places as Afghanistan, Haiti, the Canadian Arctic, Patagonia, Ethiopia. She has set up households and lived in Miami, Beverly Hills, New York City, Philadelphia, Santo Domingo, London, Rome, Geneva and Paris.

Cici McNair now lives in the Arab quarter of Palermo in a former Tunisian nightclub.