Claire LabineClaire Labine co-created Ryan's Hope along with Paul Avila Mayer in 1975. She has worked in daytime for some thirty years, having served as head writer of many different shows. (It was actually Claire's post-Ryan's Hope work at General Hospital in the mid-1990s that prompted me to begin watching Ryan's Hope when I started receiving SoapNet to begin with.) Her writing has won nine Emmys and more Writer's Guild Awards than one could count on both hands, including the 1987 Richard K. Jablow Award from the Writers Guild of America-East. Ryan's Hope, in particular, won the Writers Guild Award for Best Written Daytime Serial for each year during which Claire wrote for the show. She also won the 1995 Soap Opera Digest Editor's Choice Award for her lifelong achievement in the genre. And, from everything I've heard, she seems to be a really cool lady as well as a talented writer.
Unfortunately, Claire is not currently writing the type of material she wrote at Ryan's Hope. Like the other daytime veterans who have still been working in the past 4-5 years (Agnes Nixon, Bill Bell, Lorraine Broderick, Michael Malone, to say nothing of those scribes who have always written sub-par work) Claire seems to have been sabotaged by the increasing meddling in soap writing on the part of executives. Alarmingly candid reports (official and unofficial) have run rampant of late that the "suits" at all three networks now dictate which stories air and which actors are featured - and order drastic and incongruous changes in pre-approved stories, after they've already begun airing - in response to the transient data of focus groups and market research, in pursuit of the 18-34 year old and 12-17 year old demographic groups (particularly the latter) that advertisers covet.
Sadly, all soaps, no matter whose names are listed in the writing credits, have suffered due to this trend, as they have gone from vehicles of ongoing storytelling to fragmented series of bland soundbytes designed to attract the attention of adolescents. Which makes me all the more glad that I am able to watch Claire's writing every day via Ryan's Hope reruns, confident that the folks at ABC can't do anything to screw it up now, twenty-five years after the fact. Ryan's Hope proves that daytime is capable of so much better than the current fare, and that Claire Labine (when she had creative control) was responsible for some of the best it has had to offer.
More info about Claire can be found in the interviews section, and pictures of her can be found in the photo gallery.