Karen Karbo’s first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, 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 and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, were also named New York Times Notable Books.
Karbo’s 2004 memoir, The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT 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, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award.
Karbo is most well known for her best-selling Kick Ass Women series, the most recent of which is How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, published in 2011. How to Hepburn, published in 2007, was hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “an exuberant celebration of a great original”; #1 ebook best-seller The Gospel According to Coco Chanel appeared in 2009. Next up: Julia Child Rules, which will appear in October 2013.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
The Diamond Lane
When THE DIAMOND LANE first came out, it was admired for its edgy style and hailed, for good reason, as “A deft, tragicomic social satire--of Los Angeles and the movie biz in particular and modern mores in general--noteworthy for the complexity of its characters, crisp prose, and loopy comic style.” (Library Journal) The New York Times loved it--declaring it one of the best novels of 1991--”A wonderfully comic novel about savvy Hollywood outsiders trying to get in -- and to juggle their disastrous but funny love lives.” In the twenty-two years since publication, things have changed--or not. Filmmakers do not, perhaps, lug around the miles of celluloid and the burdensome cameras and sound recorders that they once did. Mobile phones ring all the time now, and perhaps Solly can reach his target-connections in New York more readily that he could then(perhaps not), but the convoluted relationships between art and commerce, truth and fiction, love and rivalry, wit and sadness that Karbo explores in THE DIAMOND LANE have not changed. This novel still feels knowing and audacious and up-to-the-minute.
-- Jane Smiley, Introduction, 2014 edition More info →
Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life
"In Julia Rules, Karen Karbo has written that rare bird of a book: one that manages on every page to be as enlightening as it is entertaining, as smart as it is funny. In prose as clean and sharp as your best kitchen knife, Karbo gives us a portrait of the incomparable Julia Child that’s intimate, inspiring, and unlike anything I’ve ever read about Child before.
I want to make wallpaper out of this original and beautiful book just so I can have Karbo’s unparalleled wit and wisdom always on hand."
-Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
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The Stuff of Life: A Daughter’s Memoir
The Stuff of Life describes the process of Dick Karbo's death and Karen Karbo's struggles to deal with it, and the book works beautifully on many levels. A lively, insightful and astonishingly unsentimental read, it's intensely funny in places. Karbo excels at bringing people to life on the page.
-The Washington Post
Generation Ex: Tales from the Second Wives Club
"Hilarious...Karbo makes ample use of her narrative instinct and canny eye for human foibles."
-Publishers Weekly
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From the World’s Most Elegant Woman
Karbo delivers a mini-biography, with perceptive and amusing commentary... The fashion is merely fascinating, a means to an end. The life lessons? For a woman trying to find a safe haven in America, this book delivers more wisdom --- and wit --- per page than Dr. Phil will dispense in a lifetime.
-www.headbutler.com
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How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living
Karen Karbo's fresh and revealing take on the epic life of Georgia O'Keeffe is both effortlessly entertaining and profoundly inspirational. As vivid and original as an O'Keeffe flower, How Georgia Became O'Keeffe offers a quirky, modern view of one of America's most iconic women.
-Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation.
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How to Hepburn: Lessons On Living From Kate The Great
"Karbo presents all this heterodox advice with great humor, but there's a point she's making to sister Gen-Xers: Hepburn broke all the rules women were supposed to follow and still had a fabulous life."
--Publishers Weekly
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Motherhood Made A Man Out of Me: A Novel
"Brilliant! The righteous, thoroughly American Karen Karbo delivers a swift kick in the kegels to those sappy What to Expect When You're Expecting moms in her funny and appallingly honest novel Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me."
-Vanity Fair
The Diamond Lane: A Novel
"A wonderfully comic novel about savvy Hollywood outsiders trying to get in... not only is the plot ingenious, but the writing remains deft all the way through."
-The New York Times
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Trespassers Welcome Here: A Novel
"The Russians have come -- and they're fascinationg. Karbo's first novel, about Soviet emigres in L.A., has passionate characters colliding in love, jealousy, politics, and the ongoing cold war between the sexes. An extraordinary debut that combines compassion with raucous comedy."
-The New York Times
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