Karen Andrea was born in Manchester in 1971 to immigrant parents from the Caribbean. Her mother correctly anticipated the gang and drug-related spiral threatening the family’s life on their gritty Manchester estate, and swiftly moved them to Oldham to an all-white area. At school, Karen encountered racist bullying, but this initial struggle for acceptance ignited her creativity. She spent a much time "inside her head, imagining new peoples and places, escaping to other worlds," all fertile ground for when she later decided to bring her daydreams onto the page as a writer.

After completing a Law degree at Sheffield University, Karen moved to London, and practised family law for more than ten years. Several career breaks followed, during which Karen spent periods travelling to Central America, retracing family footsteps in the

Caribbean, yoga-retreating in Southern India, and more recent spells living in Holland and later Spain, where she credits finding the main inspiration for her book The Enchanted Library.

"During siesta, I would visit a local bookshop to remind myself of my dream of becoming a published author," says Karen. "The bookshop was promoting Cervantes during the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, and also Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind as the best selling Spanish book after Don Quixote. I began pondering over the key to Zafon’s success. An image came to mind - the elderly Cervantes’ spirit instructing the young Zafon across the veil of time, and that night I dreamed vividly of a young boy discovering the magic of an abandoned library and reawakening its spell... The Enchanted Library is about the wonders of the imagination, the purity of it, and how some people of this earth tread a thin line between reality and fantasy..."

As an Afro-Caribbean author, Karen has sought to be inclusive in her books, presenting characters from a diversity of races and heritages. This is partly because she recalls with sadness the lack of cultural diversity in literature as a child growing up in the 70’s, and particularly, the lack of positive images of people of colour.

The main theme of The Enchanted Library is promoting literacy, motivated by the dire literacy statistics in the UK, and the grave manner in which that can stunt development. Karen Andrea is involved in youth mentoring for at risk children from troubled backgrounds, and also with local literacy initiatives giving workshops at schools and libraries.

Karen lives in Hackney, London, loving the local colour, diversity and greenery, and continues to work as a lawyer, when she is not writing.

Karen Andrea is a member of SCBWI and writes for the children and YA market. Her debut children’s novel, The Enchanted Library, was published by YouWriteOn/Legend Partnerships in December 2008, and is aimed at the 8-12 year-old market.