Karen Chamberlain joins the Festival in cooperation with Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore.

Karen Chamberlain is a Connecticut native and studied veterinary medicine at Colorado State University. She received a BS degree in zoology and chemistry and a BA in English and history from the University of New Mexico and earned a Master’s in Literature and Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She has worked in several occupations, including medical research technician, advertising copywriter, tutor, ski instructor and horse trainer. For six years she was senior writer and associate producer for the PBS television nature series, “Wild America.” During that time, she also directed the Aspen Writers’ Conference and established the Aspen Writers’ Foundation. In 1992, she co-founded “Nature Within,” a summer outdoor writers’ program based at a wildlife sanctuary. For ten years she served as Literary Coordinator for Canyonlands Field Institute’s Desert Writers Workshop, near Moab, Utah. In 1999, she co-founded the Glenwood Springs Writers’ Workshop. For five years Chamberlain has been the poetry editor for Mountain Gazette magazine.
           
Chamberlain’s poems, essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Hudson Review, The Nation, Poetry, Orion, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope. She has been honored with numerous awards, including a 1983 The Nation/Discovery Prize and a 1993 Poetry Award from Poets & Writers Magazine.

Chamberlain is the author of Desert of the Heart: Sojourn in a Community of Solitudes, a memoir about her years living on a remore ranch in southeast Utah. She is completing a collection of poetry, Ephedra, a collection of essays, Swimming with a Candle, a novel, The Woman Who Said Welcome and a fictional tale for horse lovers of all ages, Blackie the Mustang: An American Black Beauty Story.

Chamberlain lives in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.