Lord, Karen

Author, editor and research consultant Karen Lord has been a physics teacher, a diplomat, a part-time soldier, and an academic at various times and in various countries.

Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards. Its sequel, The Galaxy Game, was published in January 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. Her most recent novel, Unraveling, was published by DAW Books in June 2019.

She was a featured author for the 2019 International Literature Festival Berlin, and the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival; the Toastmistress for Worldcon 2017 in Finland; the 2015 Writer-in-residence for the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus MFA Programme (Trinidad); the 2014 Guest of Honour at Åcon in Finland; and a featured author at the Adelaide Writer’s Week 2013 in Australia; Calabash 2014 in Jamaica; the Bocas Lit Fest 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2019 and Bocas South 2014 in Trinidad; and the Bim Lit Fest 2012, 2014 and 2016, and Carifesta 2017 in Barbados.

She has been a judge for the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the 2018 CODE Burt Award for Caribbean YA Literature, and the 2012 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. For 2018 and 2019, she was a member of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Committee, which judges the annual Frank Collymore Literary Award.

She has been an instructor at the Clarion West Writers Workshop (Seattle, 2018) and the Clarion Workshop (San Diego, 2019); a co-facilitator or instructor for writing and reading workshops at the Bocas Lit Fest, the Bim Lit Fest, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival; and a co-facilitator for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize Workshop (2018) and mentor for the Commonwealth Writers Mentorship Programme (2019)