Karen Winters Schwartz was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. She wrote her first truly good story at age seven. Her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Schneider, publicly and falsely accused her of plagiarism. She did not write again for forty years.

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Her widely praised novels include Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?: A Family’s Journey Through Bipolar Disorder, 2010; Reis’s Pieces: Love, Loss, and Schizophrenia, 2012; and The Chocolate Debacle, 2014 (Goodman Beck Publishing). As a writer and a mental health advocate, she is a sought-after speaker at events and conferences across the country.

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Her new novel, Legend of the Lost Ass, was released on July 21, 2020 by Red Adept Publishing. Early Bird and The Vast Clear Blue were released in 2022 and are currently exclusively available on Kindle Vella. The Vast Clear Blue will be released January 10, 2023 in e-book and print.

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Educated at The Ohio State University, Karen and her husband moved to the Central New York Finger Lakes region where they raised two daughters and shared a career in optometry. She now splits her time between Arizona, a small village in Belize, and traveling the earth in search of the many creatures with whom she has the honor of sharing this world.