Carolyn Tourney Florek is a poet, visual artist and garden designer who has lived in Houston since 1983. She has degrees in geology from Wayne State University and visual arts from the University of Tulsa, and has studied creative writing at Rice University and Inprint. Her work has appeared several times in the anthology series, Suddenly, and she was a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest, 2002. In 2003, her first book of poetry, Painting Valle Grande, was published. She lives with her husband, their two children and three dogs in a rampant garden near Braes Bayou.

"Tourney Florek captures, like the painter she is, the still (and not so still) life which surrounds us. When she paints red pears she writes 'A leathery skin dressed for commerce/A grainy interior absent of the craved/flavor of deep, fugacious lips' [from Pear]. When she paints salmon she writes 'Our pool hardy instinctual swim/from frothing sea past hungry bear/we hurl over boulders, defy white-waters/travel where only possessed fools dare' [from Song of the Salmon]. Her poetry is loaded with crisp, colorful flavor." - Houston Poetry Review