About

Karen A. Wyle was born a Connecticut Yankee.  Her father was an engineer, and usually mobile for that era:  she moved every few years throughout her childhood and adolescence.  After college in California, law school in Massachusetts, and a mercifully short stint in a large San Francisco law firm, she moved to Los Angeles, where she met her now-husband, who hates L.A.  They eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University, where she has an appellate practice.  She now considers herself a Hoosier.

Wyle's principal education in writing has been reading.  She majored in English and American Literature major at Stanford University, which suited her, although she has in recent years developed some doubts about whether studying literature is, for most people, a good preparation for enjoying it.  Her most useful preparation for writing novels, besides reading them, has been the practice of appellate law -- in other words, writing large quantities of persuasive prose, on deadline, year after year.  She has one professional writing credit, an article published in the Indiana Law Journal Supplement and, with minor modifications, in the monthly magazine of the Indiana State Bar Association.  This article was a "third place recipient" of the Harrison Legal Writing Award.  Whatever that means, it came with money, a plaque, and a free lunch.

Wyle's science fiction novel Twin-Bred, published in October 2011, addresses the question: "Can interspecies diplomacy begin in the womb?" Reviewers declared Twin-Bred "an excellent story [with] awesome, well-rounded characters,"  "a unique science fiction novel," and "beautifully written," and some went so far as to say "this book has made me love science fiction again" and "real science fiction is back!" The sequel to Twin-Bred is set for release in the spring of 2013.

Wyle's second novel, Wander Home, defies easy genre classification: it is a family drama with mystery and romance elements, set in a re-imagined afterlife.

Her return to science fiction, tentatively titled Division and involving conjoined twins, is tentatively scheduled for release in the fall of 2013.

Wyle's voice is the product of almost five decades of reading both literary and genre fiction.  It is no doubt also influenced, although she hopes not fatally tainted, by her years of law practice.  Her personal history has led her to focus on often-intertwined themes of family, communication, the impossibility of controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.