Media Bio
Karen Michalson has assumed many identities – criminal defense attorney, scholar and teacher of nineteenth-century British literature, and rock musician. All her experiences find a home in her writings as an award-winning, critically acclaimed author.
She has written four novels, including The Maenad’s God, which was selected by Independent Book Review as one of the best novels of 2022 and by IndieReader as one of the Best Reviewed Books of March 2023. It also received a 5-Star Highly Recommended Award of Excellence from The Historical Fiction Company, and a Literary Titan Gold Book Award (2022).
Her earlier novels form the Enemy Glory Trilogy: Enemy Glory, Hecate’s Glory, and The King’s Glory. Enemy Glory, the first book of the trilogy, was one of the books that received the most votes for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was chosen for Locus’s Recommended Reading List of Best First Novels.
Michalson’s first book, a non-fiction work, Victorian Fantasy Literature’s Literary Battles with Church and Empire, examines the non-literary and non-aesthetic reasons underlying the bias in favor of realism in the formation of the traditional literary canon of nineteenth-century British fiction.
Her books have been favorably reviewed by Clarion Foreword, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Independent Book Review, Literary Titan, Blue Ink Review, and numerous others.
Michalson practiced criminal law for a decade. She left the law profession a little over four years ago to return to her novel-writing career full time.
Prior to what she calls her “detour into law,” she wrote novels, formed a progressive rock band, Point of Ares (she plays bass guitar), and ran a small record label-distributor (Arula Records). Point of Ares released four CDs, two of which are concept albums based on her Enemy Glory books. The band received airplay in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Brazil, and Italy and what she calls “embarrassingly kind reviews.”
Before rocking out on music and fiction writing, she began her literary career as an assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She holds a PhD in English (British literature) from the University of Massachusetts and a JD from Western New England University School of Law.
She lives in New England.