Colby was born and raised in Ann Arbor. After graduating from UM, she and her husband ran a photography business in the Nickels Arcade. Her passion for theatre took her to graduate acting school at Wayne State University’s Hilberry Theatre, followed by further training at The Circle-in-the-Square Professional Workshop in New York City where she studied with Nikos Psacharopoulos, subsequently performing at his Williamstown Theatre Festival for several years.
She next partnered with Charles Clubb at his Off-Off-Broadway The Theatre Exchange, a 50-seat loft theatre in Tribeca. After the death of Mr. Clubb in a tragic accident, Colby closed The Theatre Exchange and began writing. Her as-yet unpublished memoir, Bicycle Boy, A Death in the Neighborhood is a portrait of Mr. Clubb and Tribeca in the 1970s.
While Colby was based in New York City for 30 years, working as a secretary, she took sabbaticals to write in the UK and Ireland where she developed lifelong friendships with an elderly farmer in Shropshire and with a country doctor in North Wales. Both gentlemen are the subjects of her current book projects Ffos-y-Rhiew and Locum Tenens.
Since returning to Ann Arbor in 2006, unable to forsake theatre entirely, she wrote two plays. Her one-act play Somewhere Between Lost and Found was performed in Ypsilanti and her full-length play Bird of Passage premiered at The Bagaduce Theatre in Maine in 2019.
About her writing, Colby says, “Writing takes me to places I can’t get to anymore and lets me be with people and animals I’ve loved and lost.”
The Northeast Corner, published by Fifth Avenue Press, was released in October, 2024.