Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is a reader, writer, and professor. She is the author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023); On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos 2018); Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson, 2014); and Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press, 2012). She is co-editor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (Zondervan 2019) and has contributed to numerous other books. She has a monthly column for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, and various other places. She hosted the podcast Jane and Jesus.
Karen gives frequent lectures and talks on her work. Among the places she has spoken are Wheaton College, University of Minnesota, Indiana Wesleyan University, Northwestern University, Grace College, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, The Gospel Coalition Conference, Redeemer University College, Toronto Baptist Seminary, United Theological Seminary, Festival of Faith and Writing, Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s Women’s Conference, Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, The Row House Forum, Q Boston, the Glen Workshop, and the Humane Society of the United States.
She completed her Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo and her undergraduate studies at Daemen College in Amherst, New York. Her academic focus is British literature, with a specialty in the eighteenth century, a period she loves for its emphasis on philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and community, as well as its efforts at correcting the universal human impulse to gravitate toward extremes. Her scholarly work has appeared in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era; The Shandean; The Scriblerian and various literary encyclopedias.
She is a contributing editor for Comment, a founding member of The Pelican Project, a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, and is a former member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States. She and her husband live on a 100-year old homestead in central Virginia with dogs, chickens, and lots of books.