Karen Outen’s debut novel, Dixon, Descending (Dutton, 2024) was a Library Journal Editor’s Pick and was longlisted for both the Crook’s Corner Book Prize and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. She is a recipient of the Careers in the Making Fellowship from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, the 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, and Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Karen’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, the North American Review, Essence, and in the Washington Square Press anthologies Where Love is Found and Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood. Her essays have been published in Scoundrel Time, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, and in the anthology From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and their Machines (Michigan State University Press, 2016).

Karen has taught writing at the University of Michigan, where she earned her MFA, and at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

HoCoPoLitSo is pleased to announce that its long-standing Bauder Writer-in-Residence and school programs are now significantly supported by a generous endowment from Dr. Lillian Bauder, community leader and resident of Columbia known for investing in educational access and advancement. Since the 1960’s, Lillian and her late husband Don have been engaged in civil rights and social justice efforts, and have supported the arts. Since the 1960’s, Lillian and her late husband Don have been engaged in civil rights and social justice efforts, and have supported the arts.