Karen Babine (pronounced bay-byne) was born and raised in the Lakes Country of Hubbard County, Minnesota. She traded lakes and trees for prairie and grass on the Red River Valley of western Minnesota for college, then hopped I-94 west to Spokane to do a Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction at Eastern Washington University. In 2016, she was recognized with the Distinguished Alumni Award from her MFA program. After seven years of teaching at Bowling Green State University, she again headed west, this time to Lincoln, Nebraska, for a Ph.D. in English. She currently lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Her first book, Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for creative nonfiction and was a Finalist for the Midwest Book Award and Finalist for the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award. Her second book, All the Wild Hungers, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2019.