Ann Colbert MD grew up in Michigan where her father was a warden and the family lived on the prison grounds. She graduated from the Univ. of Notre Dame and went on to Michigan State Univ. at a branch of the medical school located in the Upper Peninsula. Dr. Colbert completed her family practice residency in Rochester, New York and finally settled in Morehead, Kentucky. After twenty years of practicing family medicine including delivering nearly 1000 babies, she saw the need for palliative care in the community so became board certified in Palliative Care and Hospice after studying in Wales, UK. and provided end of life care for another long spell. 

Venturing out of the country in 2016, she volunteered at Hillside Health Care in Punta Gorda, Belize for 18 months as the medical director of the free clinic and began to focus on global health. Upon returning to the US, she completed a Masters of Public Health from Western Kentucky Univ. and has worked in public health and medical care for the underserved since. 

Ann has long written medical non-fiction narratives about medicine and started a public blog while working in Belize. She continued posting commentaries while volunteering at a migrant clinic at the US/Mexico border and those pieces spurred enthusiasm for a migrant support group in Morehead that is still providing services. Now retired from clinical practice, Dr. Colbert has continued to write both creative non-fiction and fiction. One of her pieces on the opioid crisis will appear in an upcoming academic work. Ava Finds Time: A Tale of Medicine and Music in Appalachia was her first novel but she continues  work on other pieces that involve her background with penitentiaries and as a physician. The Mantra of Lucy Watts is her second published full length novel. 

She lives in eastern Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains with her partner and her dog. She is a multi-instrumentalist and plays with a small group of women in a string band. She has one daughter who is a full time potter.