Karen Thompson Walker was born and raised in San Diego, California, where The Age of Miracles is set. She studied English and creative writing at UCLA, where she wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin. After college, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the San Diego area before moving to New York City to attend the Columbia University MFA program. A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work — sometimes while riding the subway. She is the recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a Bomb Magazine fiction prize. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. 
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]
The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker, one the surface seems one of a spate in recent years of the “end of days” books, with its premise of an Earth whose rotation suddenly starts to slow, causing worldwide devastation. But it takes a relatively meandering route to its genre, so much so that at times one wonders if the end of the world is really all that big a deal. More YA than adult, more coming-of-age than post-apocalyptic, more quiet domesticity than action-adventure, it’s an interesting take on the end-of-the-world theme, one that succeeds in places, but overall I l... Read More
