Carolyn Wood gained fame as a 1960 Olympic gold medalist in swimming; at fourteen she became one of a handful of child athletes to win gold. Her first memoir, Tough Girl, chronicles her experience training for the Olympics alongside her later-in-life trek on the Spanish Camino de Santiago. Tough Girl was awarded the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Award by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the 2019 Buck Dawson Authors Award by the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
   Her second book, Class Notes, begins with her first year of teaching followed by a year working as the governess for Senator Robert and Ethel Kennedy's family in 1968-69.
   A lifelong Oregonian, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oregon (BA English 1967) and Portland State University (MSW 1979, MS Education 1980), and taught high school English, literature, and composition for over thirty-five years. Wood is a member of the Oregon State Sports Hall of Fame, a fellow of the Northwest Writing Project, and a past participant in the Centrum, Fishtrap, and Banff Writers writing communities. Her work has appeared in Teachers as Writers, Elohi Gadugi Journal, REI Co-op Journal, Women Who Write, and Curve Magazine.