Karen Healey

Karen Healey is a New Zealand author, born in 1981 in Whangarei, who lives in Christchurch and served as Ursula Bethell Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury in 2017. Publishing as Karen for young-adult work and Kate Healey for adult fiction, she writes across science fiction, urban fantasy, dystopia, and romance, with a voice built on wit, magic, and banter. She is best known for Guardian of the Dead (2010), a contemporary fantasy drawing on Maori mythology, and for the near-future duology When We Wake and While We Run, following a teenager revived from cryonic suspension into a changed world. Her work has won the Aurealis and Sir Julius Vogel Awards and been shortlisted for the ALA Morris Award and the Andre Norton Award.