I was born Karen Christensen in 1961, and grew up in a the small agricultural town of Hanford, in California's Central Valley. The valley, dead-level, was laid out in mile-square grids where cotton and alfalfa grew between dairies and walnut orchards, all served by gently winding deep-cut ditches that carried water from the Sierra Mountains. These ditch banks were my secret highways, and my most memorable life in that valley was riding my horse along them for miles after school and each weekend. During the school year I worked at the local racetrack, and during summers I worked in the mountains as a wrangler and trail guide.

I attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, where, increasingly compelled by the stories and themes I discovered in my first history courses, and fearing that I had nothing of my own to say, I abandoned my desire to write fiction, and began my study of the American West, and of Early Modern British and Colonial Imperialist history. I spent a year abroad in England and returned to graduate with high honors.

I went on to earn a degree in Secondary Education, and spent seven years teaching History and English at a small college-preparatory boarding school, where I met Dave Fisher, an arborist with a master's degree in Psychology. We spent a three-month honeymoon packing with our four horses down the length of the Sierras.

In 1991, influenced by high land prices in California, high environmental ideals, and my own pioneer heritage, we bought a 50 acre farm in Idaho and moved there. During the next seven years we had two children (Ellen and Grant), developed a large organic market garden, and raised the full set of farm animals. During the quieter months of winter, I read, studied, and began a more mature attempt to write fiction.

In 1998, with an early draft of A Sudden Country complete, we bought a sailboat and relocated to Puget Sound. I had my third child (Lachlan) while living aboard. We built a one-room cabin in ten acres of forest where all five of us lived through the Ages of Man during two years spent re-acquiring most standard modern conveniences. During those years and the ones that followed, I mothered, worked as a carpenter and arborist with my husband, and continued to research and revise A Sudden Country.

In 2003, with a good draft nearly finished, I was accepted to the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Vermont. Christina (Kit) Ward, a visiting agent there, soon agreed to take me on. Editor Laura Ford at Random House liked the draft Kit sent her, and the book went into production early in 2004.

Since completing the final edits of that novel, I've spent my writing hours on a screenplay and several essays, have taught short courses in techniques for revision, and have begun my research for another novel. When not writing, reading, studying movies, working as a carpenter or tree trimmer, or maintaining boats, I enjoy hiking and riding in the mountains with my family, singing and playing marimbas, and running. Otherwise I can be found eating, drinking coffee, and talking with dear friends.