Karin Barnaby was born in Austria to a Swedish/Finnish mother and German father. She grew up on Long Island, NY. She has been a teacher, author, editor, conference director and coordinator, community volunteer, activist, arts supporter, softball coach, tennis player, gardener, actor and choral singer. She is a mother and grandmother. Her literary tastes favor a really good story, as in Dickens, Tolstoy, Homer, Euripides, von Kleist, Hawthorne, Austen, Mann, Kafka, Grass, Vonnegut and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. Favorite movies include To Kill a Mockingbird, Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Raiders of the Lost Ark, In the Heat of the Night, Roman Holiday, Amarcord, 8½, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Bagdad Café, Run Lola Run, Lives of Others, The Reader.