Karen Kruse met Poul Anderson at the 1952 Chicago Worldcon. They were married in 1953 in Berkeley, California, where their daughter Astrid was born in l954. In 1960 they moved to Orinda, where they lived until Poul’s death in 2001. She now lives in Tujunga, an upland section of
the San Fernando Valley, with her cat Tybalt.
A LASFS member since the sixties, she also belonged to local SF clubs in Washington, DC and Berkeley, and worked on committees for conventions held in Washington, San Francisco, and Oakland. She has been a member of SAPS, FAPA, the Cult, and APA-Pi, and currently publishes in APA-L and APAssembly. A 1955 SAPSzine of hers introduced the "filk song" as a deliberate usage and gave examples; she wrote, produced, and sang in two filk operettas, and she was Toastmaster at this year’s ConChord. Once a regular award winner at masquerades, she now tries not to let hall costumes eat too much of her time. Her most-remembered costumes was done with Astrid: "The Bat and The Bitten," at St. Louis in 1969.
Also a Sherlock Holmes fan, she founded the Red Circle of Washington DC while still in high school, helped Anthony Boucher revive the Scowrers and Molly Maguires of San Francisco, holds the Baker Street Irregulars’ Investiture of "Emilia Lucca," and is now active in LA area groups. She was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where she became chief herald of the Known World, and is active again in the baronies of the Angels and Altavia.
Her first professional sale was in 1958; her verse and short fiction
have been published in F&SF, Fantastic, Galaxy, and Marion Zimmer
Bradley’s Fantasy. She has been a member of SFWA since it was founded. Her collaborations with Poul run from short works to the massive historical fantasy The King of Ys, originally published in four volumes but always intended as a single work.
