Author: Karen Auvinen

Karen Auvinen is poet, mountain woman, life-long westerner, writer, and the author of the memoir Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living. Her body of work traverses the intersection of landscape and place, and examines what it means to live deeply and voluptuously, and has appeared in The New York Times, The Columbia Review, Ascent, The Cold Mountain Review, and Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, among others. Awards include two Pushcart Prize nominations, a Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Imagination Award, two Academy of American Poets Awards, and a Jentel residency. She earned an MA in poetry from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D in fiction from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and presently teaches film and media studies to freshman at the University of Colorado – Boulder. Past gigs include Writer-in-Residence for the State of Colorado, editor, book-buyer, rural postal route driver, caterer, clinic assistant, landscaper, summer camp director, and guest chef. She lives in Colorado with the artist Greg Marquez (www.artquez.com), their dog River, and Dottie the Cat.