Terry Repak has worked as an investigative reporter, an editor, a television producer, a research fellow and a free-lance writer. Her volunteer work has included teaching English Language Learners and assisting at homeless shelters in Seattle; tutoring students in primary schools in Tanzania; serving on the boards of the Corona Women's Society, The International School in Dar es Salaam, the Professional Women's Network in Abidjan, C.I., and giving civics classes to amnesty applicants. She also served on the green team at other schools her children attended.

She earned a BS at Ohio Wesleyan University, a Masters degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in Liberal Arts at Emory University. She has lived in Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), London (U.K.), Salzburg (Austria), and Geneva (Switzerland). In the U.S. she has lived in Seattle, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Delaware (OH), Boston, and Washington, DC with her husband and two children.

Her travel and journal articles and poems have appeared in newspapers and magazines in the US and other countries, including the Seattle Times, Christian Science Monitor, Dar Guide, Geneva Talks, Offshoots, Hello Switzerland, The Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Gender and Society, and Social Problems. Her non-fiction books are “Waiting on Washington: Central American Workers in the Nation’s Capital” (Temple University Press, 1995) and “Edward Kennedy” (with Murray B. Levin) (Houghton-Mifflin, 1980). Her travel memoir, Circling Home: What I Learned By Living Elsewhere, will be published by She Writes Press in September 2023.