Karen Babine (pronounced bay-byne) is the two-time Minnesota Book Award-winning author of Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life (University of Minnesota, 2015), and All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer (Milkweed Editions, 2019). Her third book, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo was published by Milkweed Editions in 2025.

Forthcoming books include Innovations in the Craft of Creative Nonfiction, an Assay anthology, out from Texas Review Press in 2027 and her intermediate nonfiction craft book, Updraft: the lift, drag, craft, and flight of creative nonfiction, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic in 2027.

She is the founder and editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, whose goal is to publish the best nonfiction scholarship and pedagogy across disciplines.

She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Eastern Washington University and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

She is currently a UC Foundation Associate Professor of English at the University of  Tennessee-Chattanooga, where she was recognized with a UTAA Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023, a systemwide teaching award. Other accolades include the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Research and Creative Achievement Award (2025) and SGA Outstanding Mentor Award (2024).