In addition to marketing communications and speculative fiction, Karen Anderson writes humor. Her essay “Letters from My Past” appears in Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then and Now…Before We Forget, the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop anthology edited by Allia Zobel Nolan (a finalist in the humor category in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards).
She’s done commentary for NPR affiliate KUOW-FM on her obsession with tea and writes columns for the Home Owners Club on topics such as:
Trendy restaurants: “By the time we get ready to try a place out, it’s shuttered and the chef is off raising heritage sheep on Vashon Island.” Read more.- Seattle’s terrible traffic: “It’s rumored that a former mayor proposed that Seattle adopt the motto: ‘Abandon all cars, ye who enter here,’ but that it got bogged down in a debate over a suitably hip typeface for the signage. The choice of an emblem for the city transit policy was much easier: A native land snail against a background of slippery asphalt.” Read more.
- The urban farming fad: “So we’re putting chicken coops, rabbit hutches and goat pens next to our gas grills and hydrangeas. If your block doesn’t yet have beehives, well, someone from the mayor’s Office of Urban Trendiness will be bicycling over to investigate momentarily. We’ve got to keep up with Portland.” Read more.
- Lost and (sometimes) found: “Every house has a Bermuda Triangle of sorts where clothes go to become lost. This may be the dryer or the laundry room. At our house, it’s the tiny hall closet outside the Scholarly Gentleman’s office. I’m convinced there is a portal to another dimension in there, and someone from that other dimension is wearing my Eddie Bauer storm coat.” Read more.
