Elizabeth Stone O'Neill (1923 - 2020) Born in Portland, Oregon, Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in the northwest. Early in life she developed a passion for nature, literature, art, languages, and travel-a passion she never lost. She was multi-lingual and traveled throughout the world, exploring over 150 countries.Elizabeth was a poet, illustrator, novelist, traveler, historian, and nature writer. She lived in California, and backpacked, skied, hiked, botanized, and bird-watched in California's High Sierra, the cascades, Canadian Rockies, Norway, Spain, the Alpes, Dolomites in Italy, Alaska, Mexico, and the Andes. But the mountain range she loved the best was the California Sierra. In 1941, she attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland where she met and the next year married John Carroll O'Neill (1916 - 2011). They had two daughters, six grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren.She wrote extensively about mountain subjects and nature in periodicals and her books, Meadow in the Sky, Mountain Sage, and Tioga Tramps-the last in collaboration with her husband whose photographs grace many of her pages.Elizabeth graduated from University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she majored in French, earned a teaching credential, and a Master's degree in Inter-American Studies with a major in History. She taught every grade from kindergarten through sixth in South Stockton for 30 years. During the summers and on occasional sabbatical leaves, she had time for roaming the world.A lifelong traveler, she wrote and illustrated a variety oftravel articles. In 1953 Elizabeth was a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, one of the most prestigious competitions in the world of poetry. Her poetry has been published in numerous periodicals and in her book, Leaky Borders. She also wrote and illustrated children's books, and her press, formerly Albicaulis Press, renamed Great Owl Press, is now managed by her daughter and son-in-law, Adele Nova O'Neill and David A Carpenter. Her daughter joined her in illustrating, writing, editing, and supervised translations into several foreign languages. Unfortunately, at the time of her death, she and Adele were in the process of writing three books which Adele is now finishing.
