I’m Karen Pedersen Travis (pronounced “Ca-rin,” in the Danish tradition), and I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember.

After graduating from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, I spent nearly forty years honing my storytelling skills in the corporate world as a professional writer, marketer, and communication consultant. Today, I’m happily pursuing my true passion of writing about my life, my family, and the things that mean the most to me from my home in Minnesota, where I live with my husband and two aggressively loving golden retrievers.

My essays have been published in a number of publications. You’ll find links to them on the “stories” tab, and links to helpful resources on my blog. I am currently working on my first full-length book about my parent’s experiences as Lutheran missionaries in Southeast Asia during the 1960s.

I was inspired to write by my father, who published fifty books in his lifetime. I was inspired to publish by my mother, who convinced me that anything is possible with one common refrain: “How hard could it be?”