Karen Honnor

Author and poet - Karen Honnor lives in Surrey, UK, with her husband Stuart, two grown-up children, Matthew and Zoe and their dog, Gizmo. Alongside filling up her collection of notebooks and people watching in coffee shops as she writes, Karen devotes her time to family, dog walking, gardening and baking. The little details of her everyday, often spark a new inspiration and she enjoys seeing where such discoveries might take her. Often the result is a poem or a blog post, or something that becomes a much bigger project, as happened when writing her historical fiction novella - 'Unravelling. A tale of strength, love and dementia.' Over the years, Karen has published poetry and enjoyed writing scripts for her local drama group to perform. Writing has been her lifelong passion and she holds onto her dream to sit in a turreted house by the sea and write. Motherhood and a teaching career of almost thirty years left little time for this but in 2018 she closed her classroom door to focus fully on her writing. Whilst continuing with her commitments to her drama group as producer, script writer, choreographer and supplier of home-baked lemon drizzle cake, Karen has now completed six books. Her first, a memoir called 'Finding My Way,' has received 5 star reviews and led to Karen leading talks about issues connected with midlife, mental health and menopause. Her poetry chapbook 'Diary of a Dizzy Peri' presents her poems as a diary of her experiences, touching upon the highs and lows of the transitional phase of midlife in a way that uses humour, empathy and honesty across its pages. A recent radio interview praised its style and themes as inspirational. She followed it up with the book that she is perhaps most proud of - 'Unravelling.' A fictional story telling of how the love and connections of family are stretched to the limit, when faced with the ripple effect of dementia. Karen's experience of losing her Dad to dementia, forms the cornerstone to this sensitively told story. More recently, Karen has published a further three poetry collections - 'Click and Connect - A Collection of Hope,' 'Polaroids and Petals,' and 'Just Take Five.' She is humbled to hear how these books are making a difference to people, being read by High School students and in local community projects, helping to spread kindness and understanding. She may not yet have her turret to write in, but she is proud to be part of the writing community and publishing her work. Keep up to date with Karen's writing story, blog posts and poetry via her website: https://www.karenhonnor.com/