Dr Karen Hughes is the author of the five-book Kalika Magic series. She grew up on a 6,000-acre wheat and cattle station on the Liverpool Plains, climbing trees, paddling in the creek and reading her way through Narnia, Middle Earth and Earthsea. Her first school was a bush primary with six pupils. At twelve she went to boarding school, where her homesickness showed her something the teachers couldn't—the most important things in the world were her family and the land.

She studied Law and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, then practised business and corporate law in Canberra for nearly a decade before leaving the law to write. Her PhD in English examined spiritual themes in speculative fiction.

Karen is the founder and director of Hunter Valley Writers, which runs creative writing workshops across Australia, and the director of Ironbark Retreat, a bush sanctuary on the mid-north coast of NSW that opens to its first guests in October 2026.

She is making final edits to Groundwater, her first novel for adults, a work of speculative fiction that began as the creative component of her PhD.

Karen is represented by Jeanne Ryckmans at Key People Creative Management.