Karen Osborne

Karen Osborne is an American author of fantasy and science fiction, active in the field since 2008, with most of her work appearing since 2016.

Biography Karen Osborne was born in Niskayuna, New York. She graduated from Niskayuna High School and attended Nazareth College near Rochester, New York, studying English, communication and information design. Her first job was as a packer of Tupperware orders; she has been an English teacher, wedding videographer, cashier, bookseller, and press release writer. She has worked for community weekly newspapers in New York, Florida, and Maryland as a reporter, photographer, editor, and website manager, winning awards for hews and opinion writing.

Osborne is currently a full-time writer living in Baltimore, Maryland with, as she writes, "two violins, an autoharp, five cameras, two cats, and a family." and was a nominee but not a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. one of 10 finalists for the 2021 Locus Poll Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for the 2021 Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. Engines of Oblivion (978-1-250-21550-5, Tor, Feb. 2021)

Short fiction

"Retirement" (from Aoife's Kiss #7, Dec. 2008) "Gazer" (from Electric Spec v. 11, iss. 4, November 30, 2016) "An Equal Share of the Bone" (from Escape Pod #603, November 23, 2017) "Even to the Teeth" (from Robot Dinosaur Fiction!, July 6, 2018) "Dollhouse" (from Escape Pod #641, August 16, 2018) "The Bodice, the Hem, the Woman, Death" (from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #263, October 25, 2018) "The Blanched Bones, the Tyrant Wind" (from Fireside Quarterly, Jan. 2019) "The Dead, in Their Uncontrollable Power" (from Uncanny Magazine iss. 27, Mar./Apr. 2019) "The Two-Bullet War" (from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #278, May 23, 2019) "Cratered" (from Future Science Fiction Digest iss. 3, Jun. 2019) "Promises We Made Under a Brick-Dark Sky" (from Clarkesworld iss. 178, Jul. 2021) "Osteogenesis" (from Kaleidotrope iss. 67, Spring 2025)

Nonfiction "The Big Idea: Karen Osborne" (on John Scalzi's Whatever, September 21, 2020) "Five Books Where Assuming Aliens Are Just Like You Might Get You Killed" (on Tor.Com, September 21, 2020)

Interviews Wise, A. C. "An Interview with Karen Osborne", September 8, 2020. "Interview with Karen Osborne" (at Thunder Bay Public Library's Off The Shelf, January 6, 2021) Sorg, Arley. "Thrilling to the Harmony: A Conversation with Karen Osborne" in Clarkesworld, Feb. 2021.