Since 2011, Karen, a former attorney, has had the good fortune to write full-time from her home in Amsterdam. “I work all day with the characters I’ve created and learned to love. If I get lucky, they sit up and tell me their stories. I work with language – no longer to convince or badger or corner – but to paint a picture.”

Her stories have been published in Jabberwock Review and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and her novel The Dancing Girl and the Turtle was published by Linen Press in 2017. It’s the first in a planned quartet of historical novels set in Shanghai.

She’s studied with authors Lan Samantha Chang and Yiyun Li. You can read more about her and her work on her blog.