Karen Piper is the award-winning author of The Price of Thirst, Left in the Dust, and Cartographic Fictions.  She grew up in China Lake, California, and is currently a literature and geography professor at the University of Missouri. 

The Price of Thirst is the winner in current events of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for 2014.  She has also received a Sierra Nature Writing Award, a National Endowment of the Humanities Awards, a Huntington Fellowship, a Carnegie Mellon Fellowship, and a Sitka Center residency.