“As a toddler in the playpen I turned the pages of my mom’s magazines without tearing a one,” says Karen Phillips. As a child, she remembers reading Tom Sawyer, Little Women, and other classics, including the entire Anne of Green Gables series. “Books, paper, and pens always fascinated me, and I scribbled stories, poems, and journals since I could hold writing paraphernalia in my hands.”

Although she graduated with a B.S. in English education, Karen acquired her M.S. in elementary education and taught in several schools before “retiring” to become a stay-at-home and erstwhile home-schooling mom.

A recent empty nester (though one child boomeranged back this summer), Karen explored the possibilities of a later-life-calling and could not escape from writing. Plunging in, she searched the internet, attended a writers’ conference, joined several online groups, set weekly writing goals, created a blog, joined a critique group, read everything she could, wrote short pieces, had those critiqued, submitted for publication, and had a conference review published online—all in seven months! Whew! “I’m a late bloomer, with no time to waste!” She knows she will succeed in reaching others with her writing, whether or not it brings paychecks, because she has the greatest support system of all: her best friend and husband, and her two young adult children.

Karen anticipates learning much from Chattanooga Writers Guild. This early in her writing career, she has yet to find her voice or her niche. However, Karen has never been happier than now, because she is living the Writing Life, and it is exactly where she should be at this moment.

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