Karelia has taught writing for fifteen years, including ten years as tenured faculty at Linn-Benton Community College in Oregon. She loves watching her students find their voices.
She believes in the power of writing to transform lives. She writes every day and encourages her students to do the same. Her mantra as a teacher and a writer comes from Mary Oliver who said, “Writing is like going on a date. Nothing happens if you don’t show up.” Karelia has a BA in comparative literature from Smith College and an MA in English literature from the University of Oregon.
Karelia publishes in several genres, but romance is her favorite. She is agented by Jane Dystel (agent to Barack Obama). Her romance novels are published by the Forever Yours imprint of Grand Central Publishing.
She is proud to have broken into a Big Five imprint that primarily publishes heterosexual romance. She believes that lesbians, as minority writers, must not be good enough; they must be better than other writers in their genre. She wants to help every student achieve that greatness. Her novels include Worth the Wait, For Good, Something True, The Admirer, The Purveyor, and Lambda Literary Award and Golden Crown Literary Society finalist Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before.
She met her wife of more than twenty years at a lesbian bar, proving that happily ever after really can come true.