Elizebth Gail Chandler has degrees from Berea College in Kentucky and from The New School in New York City. She served three years in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam era. In 1976, she became the first female deputy warden in a male prison in Kentucky and enjoyed a career in corrections working in four state facilities and directing a Dismas halfway house. . In 2003, Dismas Charities published her nonfiction book, Sunflowers on Market Street, in 2009, Finishing Line released her poetry chapbook, Where the Red Road Meets the Sky
and in 2016, He Read to Us.