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Karen Auvinen

Biography

Karen Auvinen

Karen Auvinen is a poet, mountain woman, lifelong westerner, writer, and the author of the memoir ROUGH BEAUTY: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living. Her body of work, which examines what it means to live deeply and voluptuously, has appeared in the New York Times as well as numerous literary journals. A former Artist-in-Residence for the State of Colorado, Karen is the winner of two Academy of American Poets awards and has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes in fiction. She earned her MA in poetry from the University of Colorado—Boulder, under the mentorship of Lucia Berlin, and went on to earn her PhD in fiction writing from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Currently, she teaches film and popular culture at the University of Colorado—Boulder.

Karen Auvinen

Books by Karen Auvinen

by Karen Auvinen - Memoir, Nonfiction

Determined to live an independent life on her own terms, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions --- except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck and a few singed artifacts --- Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.