Karen Klockner:
Karen has had a multi-faceted career in publishing — as a book and magazine editor, reviewer, translator, bookseller, and literary agent. But first and foremost she is a developmental editor, working closely with authors to help them focus and sustain their work while maintaining their voice and vision. Over the years, Karen has edited numerous award-winning books and worked with such authors and artists as Cris Peterson, Joan Dunning, Devra Lehman, Ching Yeung Russell, Ann Grifalconi, Maryann Cocca-Leffler, Andrea Shine, and Jennifer Owings Dewey. One of her great joys has been working with Patricia McMahon on her highly acclaimed books: Chi-Hoon: A Korean Girl; Listen for the Bus: David’s Story; Six Words, Many Turtles, and Three Days in Hong Kong; Dancing Wheels; One Belfast Boy; and Just Add One Chinese Sister.
Karen has a master’s degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts and her master’s in English from Simmons College. She began her career at The Horn Book Magazine and then moved to Little, Brown & Company, where she rose to senior editor. She later held the same position at Orchard Books. Karen ran her own freelance business—developing, editing, and packaging children’s books for several major publishers—for over a decade. Then, building on her editorial experience, she became a literary agent representing writers and artists for Transatlantic Agency. Currently, Karen is Editorial Director of namelos llc, a consortium of publishing professionals offering developmental editing to writers as they shape their work and prepare it for submission to publishers.
Bringing literature and art into the lives of children has been a guiding passion for Karen, both personally and professionally. She has worked with children in schools, libraries, churches, and museum settings—including tutoring in the city schools of Cleveland and New York and serving as a school guide at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Karen has two grown children of her own and lives in New Jersey with her husband and their large Newfoundland, Tessa.
KARYNA MCGLYNN:
Karyna McGlynn's newest poetry collection Hothouse (Sarabande Books, 2017) is a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her other books include I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books, 2009), The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs Editions, 2016), Alabama Steve (Sundress, 2014) and Scorpionica (New Michigan Press, 2007). Her poems have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Subtropics, AGNI, Witness, Ninth Letter, and The Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day.
Karyna holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, and earned her PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Houston where she served as Poetry Editor and Managing Editor for Gulf Coast. A veteran performance poet, Karyna has been a member of five National Poetry Slam teams. Her honors include the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry, the Academy of American Poets' Prize, the Marion Barthelme Award for Editorial Excellence, the Claridge Residency, a Cullen Foundation Fellowship, the Zell Fellowship in Poetry, and the Hopwood Award. She was recently the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing & Translation at Oberlin College. She currently teaches in the Department of Literatures & Languages at Christian Brothers University in Memphis.
Find her online at www.karynamcglynn.com