STAYTON, Ore. -- The Stayton Public Library is excited to announce a visit featuring author Karen Karbo on Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 7:00 pm in the E. G. Siegmund Meeting Room. There will be a reception accompanying the event.

Karen Karbo is the author of multiple award-winning novels, memoirs and works of non-fiction.  Recently, she was one of 24 authors selected for the inaugural Amtrak Residency. Her next book, In Praise of Difficult Women in forthcoming in 2018.

Her best-selling “Kick-Ass Women” series includes Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life (2013); How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living (2011); The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman (2009), which was an international best-seller; and How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great  (2007), hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “an exuberant celebration of a great original.”  

Karen's first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here (1990) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year.  Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane (1991) and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me (2001) were also named New York Times Notable Books. Her 2004 memoir, The Stuff of Life (2004), about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was a New York Times Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics’ Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Non-fiction. 

Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, the New York Times, salon.com, The Nervous Breakdown.com and other magazines.

She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, an Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award. She also sits on the Board of Directors of Portland Literary Arts.

Karen grew up in Los Angeles California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.