Unable to break into the tenured groves of academe, despite a solid and well-received doctoral dissertation, Chamberlin spent several decades of his life working as a historian, archivist, university teacher, lecturer, poet, essayist and writer of longer and shorter fictions while living in Manhattan, Germany, France, Italy, Washington DC and Greece. In 2001 he retired from an executive position at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to move with his wife Lynn-Marie Smith to Key West, Florida to concentrate on a series of five novels revolving around the city of Berlin in the 20th century, one of which takes place in the Conch Republic, as the island of Key West is also known. His most recent books are Paris Now and Then: Memoirs, Opinions and a Companion to the City of Light for the Literate Traveler (2002, revised edition 2004), Mediterranean Sketches: Fictions, Memories and Metafictions (2005) and (with Nance Frank) Mario Sanchez: Once Upon a Way of Life (2006). Chamberlin also serves on the Durrell School of Corfu board of directors and faculty. The School has recently published his A Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell (2007).
