Karen Harding: Edinburgh NaNoBeans Regional Coordinator.
Karen lives in Edinburgh and coordinates the Edinburgh NaNoBeans Writing Group that offers free year-round support and advocacy for budding and published writers alike. Her passion for storytelling began at a very young age, with weekly trips to the library, an all-consuming addiction to ‘Point Horror,’ and the discovery of Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ As soon as the hobbits got involved, all bets were off! Every holiday that followed would somehow turn into a bookish quest for literary culture. She developed a solid reputation for ‘just dashing off for a minute’ (which usually translated to ‘she’s probably back in five hours…maybe’) to dig into the local bookshops and locate that new special edition of her favourite book that had just come out. If it wasn’t that, she was off joining in the adventure, by skydiving over Mount Doom in New Zealand and flinging a paper ring into the fires of Mordor. Karen was selected by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy to be a host during their global LOTR-read-a-thon, acquiring the title of ‘Gandalf of the Day,’ while leading thousands of readers worldwide through Middle Earth. Her chapters were well received, and she was invited back to lead a segment of the Silmarillion-read-a-thon the following year. She has never geeked out so hard!
Karen‘s work experience is not exactly your normal run of the mill deal for a writer, but is full of the most outlandish adventures that constantly inspire her writing. She has run thousands of history tours in the most haunted, underground streets of Edinburgh, dressed as a fifteenth-century maid embroiled in a screaming murder. She has sailed on research vessels with ORCA, the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, and the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre, running acoustic research, logging wildlife sightings, and always hoping to spot her favourite orca whales. Karen also lived as a conservation guide and habitat steward in the wilds of the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, the only place on Earth where grizzly bears outnumber humans fifty to one. A true introvert at heart, she often went weeks without seeing another human, and it was absolute and utter bliss. Sadly grizzly bears eventually do hibernate, so she had to come back once they were safely snoozing. But this experience solidly established her life’s goal to ‘be like Galadriel’ and move to the woods permanently, so she can read all the books and write her stories in peace and quiet…forever. What would she take as an essential item? An endless supply of Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew, there’s nothing finer for a writer’s life!
You can find Karen on her social pages below:
Instagram: @Karen_Harding
Discord: @NaNoBeans
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