ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clea Koff
Born in England to an American father of Polish and Russian descent and a Tanzanian mother, Clea spent her childhood in England, East Africa, and both coasts of the United States as her parents made documentary films. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Stanford University, a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and was trained by Dr. Walt Birkby in the Master's program in forensic anthropology at the University of Arizona.
Between 1996 and 2000, Clea worked as a forensic expert for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The Bone Woman, first published in 2004 and now published in ten languages and more than 14 countries, is a memoir of those experiences. Among other honors, The Bone Woman was awarded the Nancy (France) Human Rights Book Prize, was a National Public Radio Best, a Discover Magazine Top 20 Science Book, and an Editor's Pick of the Foreign Policy Association.
Clea went on to co-coordinate the Anthropology Laboratory of the United Nations Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus in 2006, working on behalf of Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF). She also founded the US non-profit Missing Persons Identification Resource Center (MPID), which was profiled by Judy Muller on ABC World News Tonight Weekend.
Clea now writes fiction. Silent Evidence, Book 1 in The Jayne and Steelie forensic thriller series was published by HarperCollins in 2024 in a three-book deal, continuing into 2025, with Book 2, Deadly Evidence, hitting shelves in April (coming soon to the US) and Bones of Evidence to follow. She has signed a five-country, three-book deal with Audible to publish The Jayne and Steelie audiobook series in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. Also in 2024, two of Clea's novels were published in translation: Freezing as The Bone Language by Eksmo and Surfacing, the sequel to Freezing (French) by Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson.
For more on Clea's novels, please visit: www.cleakoff.com.
Author portrait: Copyright © David Ignaszewski
