Karen is now half way to her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at St. Mary's College (Moraga, CA). It has been an incredible year; Karen found it to be incredible to be back in the classroom again. She took 3 classes in the fall:
- Craft of Fiction covered the great southern fiction writers (Welty, O'Connor, Faulkner);
- Seminar in Contemporary Thought which covered an essay or book on the subject of the artist in society. (Plato, Brecht, Sartre, Kundera, Foucault, Dalai Lama, Malcolm X, DeBeauvoir, and Bachelard);
- Fiction Workshop where portions of work in progress was cticiqued by the 12 fellow fiction writers (a humbling but quite enlightening experience.)
In January (yes, she managed to find a school that didn't do away with its Jan Term) Karen took a screenwriting course; quite a strange experience to have to limit yourself to only the two senses of sight and sound to evoke a story. And this spring, she had just one class, a required fiction workshop.
In terms of her work, Karen finished the first draft of her first novel, Unfamiliar Territory, at the end of August, 1995. She took a three-month break before starting draft #2 and worked on some short stories, some poems, and the first 60 pages of another novel. She recently spent three days at St. Mary's lecturing and reviewing student work.
Karen's husband, Eric, is a Computer Network Consultant whose 'great patience and loving support' continue to see Karen through this non-lucrative phase of her new life. They continue to live in Half Moon Bay, California and enjoy long walks along the beach two blocks from their home, as well as frequent trips up to San Francisco for readings and concerts.