Carolyn Burke was born in Sydney, spent many years in Paris, and now lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Her 2011 No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, published by Knopf and Bloomsbury, has been translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, and Portuguese. It won praise as "an eloquent embrace of the famed French singer" (Publishers Weekly); "sympathetic . . . captivating . . . highly effective" (New York Review of Books); "masterful storytelling" (Library Journal). She has performed with singers of Piaf's repertoire in Paris, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Carolyn’s Lee Miller: A Life, published by Knopf and Bloomsbury in 2006, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award. People called it "a great read"; The Telegraph wrote, "Lee Miller was an astounding woman, brought memorably to life by this astounding book."

Carolyn spent time with Lee Miller while working on her first book, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. The definitive biography of the expatriate artist/poet, it sparked a major Loy revival.

Her writing has appeared in such places as Art in America, Vogue, La Nouvelle Revue Française, and The New Yorker. She has taught life-writing at book festivals and universities in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and France. Recent appearances include talks at the Cosmos Club, Washington, DC, the University of Sydney, and Columbia University’s Maison Française. Carolyn is a member of PEN and the Authors Guild. A student of Zen Buddhism, she took the precepts with Tenshin Reb Anderson in 2010.