[4] Her father, Richard Harold Shreve,[5][6][better source needed] was an airline pilot for Delta Air Lines and later a trompe l'oeil painter, while her mother, Bibiana Kennedy, was a homemaker.
[citation needed] In 1980, she married again, this time to John Clemans, a photographer she met at Viva Magazine, in Nairobi, and with whom she had two children, Christopher and Katherine.
While in Kenya, Shreve worked as Deputy Editor for Viva Magazine, an award-winning Kenyan publication under the direction of Salim Lone.
One book, A Change in Altitude, was a fictional account about a climb to the top of Mount Kenya that Wescott and Shreve did with their friends Mary and Richard Oates.
[3] In 1999, while she was teaching Creative Writing at Amherst College, Oprah Winfrey called, selecting The Pilot's Wife for her book club.
[10] In 2000, her novel The Weight of Water was made into a movie of the same title, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Sean Penn, Sarah Polley, and Elizabeth Hurley.