Leaving

American author, Karen Kingsbury, is the country's bestselling, inspirational storyteller. She has over twenty-five million copies of her books in print. She knew she wanted to be a writer as soon as ten years old, falling for the Dr. Seuss at the age of 5. She was born in Fairfax, Virginia, but given her dad's computer programming job, the family of seven moved quite often. When Karen was 10, they moved to the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. Just thirty minutes from the beach, she spent hours sitting on the sand, reading her books, and dreaming of being a novelist.

Karen's journalism teacher placed her on the newspaper staff at Pierce College, and told her to never stop writing. She graduated from California State University at Northridge with a degree in journalism. She immediately began a job as a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times. She wrote mostly high school sports articles in the beginning, but later wrote for college and national professional sports. It was during this time that she met her future husband, Don. He was a handsome young man with an extraordinary love of Jesus Christ. Karen tells the story that he came to pick her up for their first date, with Bible in hand. It became what she considered annoying after three months, so she confronted him about it. Don left that day, but God would bring them back together. She unknowingly came to understand Don's thoughts about life as a Christian. They married and lived their married life as God would see fit. When she found out she was pregnant after six months of marriage, she did not know how she
would take care of a baby with such a busy work schedule. Don said that God would show them the way to write at home. Later, she submitted an article to People Magazine, and they thought the article would make a great book. Karen submitted a book proposal, a bidding war resulted, and she ended up with a book deal that paid her a little more than she already made in one whole year of work. She has been home writing books ever since.

Karen wrote four books in the crime genre, then decided to switch to books that glorified God. Her first novel in the new genre was ......Where Yesterday Lives. It was published in 1997, the same year their third child was born. Ever since her first novel, she wrote life-changing fiction. She said God puts a story on her heart and in her mind. Many of her books are under development with Hallmark Films and as major movies.

Karen and Don now live in Tennessee. She is an adjunct professor of writing at Liberty University. In 2001, they adopted three boys from Haiti, very quickly doubling their family. They are now empty nesters, living near their five adult children.