Biography

Karen Ullo is the author of Jennifer the Damned (Wiseblood Books 2015).  She holds master of fine arts in screenwriting from the University of Southern California and is a regularly contributing blogger for Dappled Things, a journal devoted to art and literature. She is also a classically trained soprano who works full-time as a church music director. She is a native of Baton Rouge, where she lives with her husband and two young sons.

Schedule

10:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.
Capitol Park Welcome Center, Meeting Room
Book Talk
Jennifer the Damned

11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing

Jennifer the Damned

When a sixteen-year-old orphan vampire adopted by an order of nuns matures into her immortal, blood-sucking glory, all hell literally breaks loose.  Yet with every rapturous taste of blood, Jennifer Carshaw cannot help but long for something even more exquisite: the capacity to experience true love.  As she struggles to balance her murderous secret life with homework, cross-country practice, and her first boyfriend, Jennifer delves into the terrifying questions surrounding her inhuman existence, driven by the unexpectedly human need to understand why she is doomed to a life she never chose.

Bridging the gap between the literary tradition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the modern teen vampire romance made popular by the Twilight series, Jennifer the Damned reexamines the legendary monster as a conflicted and complex being.  Jennifer is at once the quintessential vampire, embodying an unholy union of life and death; yet she is also a sympathetic young woman full of spiritual anxieties, gifted with a limitless sense of ironic humor, and possessed of a beautifully persistent hope in the love she yearns for.