Claire Elizabeth Terry was born in Coventry, England.

She trained in stage management at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London and worked for several years in British theatre. During this time she successfully fought to become the first female stagehand at the Royal National Theatre. Claire is a descendant of British actress Ellen Terry.

Her early experience in theatre, particularly in stage production at the Royal National Theatre, continues to influence her approach to narrative structure and dialogue in both fiction and film.

After leaving theatre, she contributed to the Rough Guides travel series and was shortlisted for the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize. 

In 2008 she conceived and edited The Art of Living: A Practical Guide to Being Alive, a collaborative book bringing together perspectives from writers, thinkers, and public figures around the world. All profits from the project were donated to Green Cross International.

She later founded the not-for-profit platform The Art of Living Guide, a website designed to gather reflections from people across cultures on the shared experience of being alive. The platform features more than 400 contributions from users. 

In 2016 she founded the Rocaberti Writers’ Retreats, residential writing programmes held in historic European locations that bring together emerging writers and leading industry mentors. The retreats have hosted producers, screenwriters and executives from across the international film and television industry.

In addition to her writing, Claire Elizabeth Terry works in film. Her short film Thirty Minutes premiered in 2020 and received more than forty awards at international festivals.

While living in Berlin shortly before the fall of the Wall, Terry later discovered that she had been under surveillance by the East German secret police, the Stasi – an experience that later informed her novel Fall.

She currently lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.