Barry Stevens was a self-described "High School drop-out, 1918, because what she wanted to know, she couldn't learn in school." She and her husband moved to Hawai'i in 1934. Before Albert Mason Stevens's death in 1945, Barry moved to the mainland. She worked at Orme Ranch School near Prescott, AZ, and from 1948 to 1951 she was an administrative aide at Deep Springs College, near Big Pine, California. She later worked as an editor in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then relocated to California.