After playing hooky one day in the 7th grade to read Gone With the Wind, Karen White knew she wanted to become either Scarlett O'Hara—or a writer. Being practical though, she spent the next dozen years pursuing a BS in management, graduating from Tulane University and working in business. Later, after leaving the corporate world to marry and stay home with her children, she fulfilled her dream of becoming a writer and wrote her first book. In the Shadow of the Moon was published in August, 2000 and was a double RITA award finalist—and since then, Karen has published seven more books and is a National bestselling author.

Karen writes what she calls "grit lit"—emotional southern family dramas. The South, with its lush landscape of collective history and family tales, is ripe for storytelling and very hard to resist for this writer.

For this busy American wife and mother of two, writing is “something for which I have to work very hard to carve out time in my everyday life. If I didn't love to write so much, I would have given up long ago because squeezing time to write in between laundry, car-pooling, and being mom-of-all-trades is one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do. But I simply couldn't imagine my life any other way!”