Karen Wolny has over three decades of editorial experience in publishing which began at Oxford University Press where she dove into her career working with such venerable and award-winning historians as Edward Ayers, Sean Wilentz, and David Hackett Fischer. Later, as the Publishing Director of Social Sciences at Routledge, she had the opportunity to publish truly cutting-edge books, most notably working with Susan Stryker on the first Transgender Reader which was a Lambda Literary Award winner.

 

She diversified her list more broadly toward issue-oriented topics from thought leaders, both established and emerging, and turned her focus to include publishing books on gender, race, and social justice. Her editorial career transitioned from academic and university presses and became more entrenched in traditional trade houses, first as the Editorial Director at Palgrave Macmillan and later as an Executive Editor at St. Martin’s Press. There she published books on the kinds of social issues discussed around any lively dinner table, books that draw back the veil on the establishment, that explore topics where culture meets economics, that stir the pot and give us a new way to look at the present or the past, or just at the way we live now. She’s worked with Samantha Powers on her first book, Realizing Human Rights, Maria Shriver on The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, LATimes bestseller, Rana Awdish, MD, In Shock, A Doctor Turned Critically Ill Patient Explores the Humanity Gap in Medicine, NYTimes bestseller, Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, by Ron Miscavige, The Isis Apocalypse, by William McCants of the Brookings Institute, Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids, by Nicholas Kardaras, one of the country’s foremost addiction experts, Letters to a Young Muslim, by Omar Saif Ghobash, the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to France, bestselling author and feminist leader, Phyllis Chesler, and Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, by Hayden Herrera.

 

She’s passionate about working closely with authors at every level to write proposals, develop and edit full-length manuscripts, and to lend a deft hand in helping authors navigate the publishing process in general. 

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