Karen Lynn Allen

Karen Lynn Allen writes with a wide-ranging imagination grounded in wry humor. Her novel, Beaufort 1849, is historical fiction about the birthplace of the secession movement in South Carolina. Her novel, Universal Time, is a sci-fi comedy set in San Francisco and a host of extraplanetary locales. Her latest novel, In the Land of Porcelain, is contemporary fiction set in San Francisco in the early 90s.

Karen grew up in San Francisco and then in Edmonds, Washington. At seventeen, she returned to California to study English and industrial engineering at Stanford University. Careening from Chaucer to circuits sometimes made her brain hurt, but no doubt it was good for her. After graduating she worked at several large corporations, alternately frustrated and amused by surreality of it all. Writing was always her true love, and eventually she made her way back to it.

Karen has lived in San Francisco the past thirty years where she and her husband raised their three children in a house with eighty-eight stairs to the front door.