The life of #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, Karen Kingsbury, will inspire you to pursue the God-given passions in your heart.
Karen Kingsbury is an award-winning inspirational storyteller and novelist with over twenty-five million copies of her books in print worldwide. Her last dozen titles have topped bestseller lists and many of her novels are under development with Hallmark Films and as major motion pictures. This is her story.
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My heart overflowed with stories. But the practical side of writing looked like journalism, which I studied through high school and college. There was a point
THE EARLY DAYS
in my freshman year at Pierce College when I actually decided
I was born in Fairfax, VA, the oldest of Anne and Ted Kingsbury’s five children. I was hooked on Dr. Seuss from the first time my dad read me ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas’. I had the story memorised by the time I was five. We moved often because of my dad’s computer programming job with IBM. Maybe it was the moving that truly underlined my love for reading. In books, I found friends I never had to leave. When I was 10 years old we left Michigan for California, where we stayed for the next two decades. The beach was just thirty minutes away over Malibu Canyon, and there on the shore of the Pacific Ocean I dreamed about being a novelist.
I was sick of writing. I would be a lawyer, a prosecutor. That year I took an English class and three weeks into the semester, Professor Bob Scheibel ordered me to the front of the room. Bob was a surly old journalist with a lifetime of experience. He ran the school newspaper. He pointed at me, real sharp-like, and said, “Are you Karen Kingsbury?” I felt my knees tremble. “Yes, sir.” “Two things.” He looked over the glasses at the end of his nose. “First, you will never ever stop writing. And second, you’re on staff.” There was no arguing with Mr. Scheibel. And like that my future was set. After graduation, I immediately started work as a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times. I covered high school sports initially, but quickly I began seeing bigger stories, deeper stories and I earned a reputation. If a story needed tears, my editors would give it to me.