• Take a look at my resume.
• Read some of my stories and articles.
• Discover my favorite authors, composers, artists, etc.
• See photos of my rabbits.
• Read my paper on the Minoan “Sanctuary Rhyton” (PDF file)
• Find out if you’re related to me.
• Order an autographed copy of Milton Wolff’s Spanish Civil war novel, Another Hill
• Visit my online bookstore.
• Hop on over to links to my friends, clients, and some organizations and businesses I support.

Stories and Articles

I’m primarily a fiction writer, although I do enjoy writing the occasional article or book review. Most of my stories can be described as magical realism, which meant that during the reign of “dirty realism” my work excited more interest from genre magazines than from the literary establishment. Once I grasped that this would bring me more readers, I accepted the idea. Finding a larger audience hasn’t changed how I write (which depends on the story I have in mind), so I say the hell with status.
  Ideas, character, atmosphere, and rhythm are of great importance to me, though not always simultaneously. Quality of light is vital.
  I detest any conflict between flow and clarity, or between poetry and clarity. In this web site I err on the side of clarity. In its next incarnation it will be more poetic.

My main nonfiction project is a work of feminist art history, Women Looking at Men, which includes artists from the sixteenth century to the present. It has been a great pleasure to research (and often interview) so many fascinating women and their art; all I need now is the right publisher. (If you’d like to know what some other authors have written about women artists, parts of my bibliography are now online.)

Want to see some clips? Here are some of my shorter stories and articles.

		“Heartwood” was my first published story and could be called a sort of bestseller. It was first published by the Northwest Review in 1983 and was reprinted in Magic Realism in 1991. In 1993 it was translated into Polish and appeared in the Polish magazine Czerwony Karzel (Red Dwarf). “The Room With the Moa that We’re Not Supposed to Write About” was originally published in a short-short issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine back in 1990. It won fifth place in that issue’s reader poll, and I like to think that it would have ranked even higher had my friends and family only bothered to vote. On the other hand, it’s nice to know that a lot of complete strangers liked the story. MZB came up with a pretty neat layout which suggested some of the elements in my own design for it here. This article on orienteering appeared in Chevron USA Odyssey. I sometimes review books for Women Artists News. Here’s one about artists in Australia and New Zealand.

Karla’s Bizarre (?) Favorites

Some of my favorite authors are Heinrich Böll, Italo Calvino, Colette, Robertson Davies, Günter Grass, Jiri Gruša, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, Dorothy L. Sayers, Muriel Spark, Amos Tutuola, and Charles Williams. To be sure, I also enjoy Jane Austen and the Brontës. (To order copies of some of my favorite books, visit my online bookstore.)

As for playwrights, I’m fond of Calderon de la Barca, Eugene Ionesco, Garcia Lorca, Tom Stoppard, and of course Shakespeare.

Wandering on to music, there’s Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Pres, John Dowland, Henry Purcell, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Smetana, Dvorák (please e-mail me if you know the correct HTML code for the r in Dvorák or for an l with a slash!), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Igor Stravinsky.

And miscellaneous folk and international music, especially from the British Isles, France, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Peru, Brazil, north Africa, and Indonesia. (Well, I can’t go on and list every country!)

And let’s not forget the likes of the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, Pentangle, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees, etc.

What about art? Er... Start with the ancient Greeks, Minoan and Roman painting, Medieval, Renaissance, and Mannerist art. I abhor depictions of fat naked infants (with or without wings) from any period. Like most art movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Impressionism, Expressionism, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc.).

Recommendations

Check out Artemisia Gentileschi (ignore the flagrantly incorrect movie about her); Giulia Lama; Angelika Kauffman (gorgeous color even if you don’t like Neoclassicism); Camille Claudel (fairly accurate movie about her); Suzanne Valadon; droves of early twentieth century Russian women; Carrington (fairly accurate movie about her); Remedios Varo, Toyen, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Meret Oppenheim (of the famous fur teacup). The Varo Registry has info on both present-day and long-dead women artists. So does my feminist art history bibliography. You can also buy copies of books about women artists at my online bookstore.

Family History Stuff

I’m making progress: now you can look at a quick-and-dirty genealogy of my grandmother, Esther Nelson Huebner. She was born in Clay County, MN to Norwegian immigrants from Vinger (Hedemark) and Nordehov (Buskerud).

While you await further online genealogies, here are some web sites that will appeal to family history enthusiasts, especially those with ancestors in Norway, Scotland, and Clay County, Minnesota.

• Organize your family tree with an excellent program, The Master Genealogist (popularly known as “TMG”).
• The 1801 Norwegian census is online and searchable in both English and Norwegian.
• GENUKI Scotland is a great resource for a wide variety of historical data.
• Angus (formerly Forfarshire), Scotland has a colorful site focusing on local history and attractions.
• The University of North Dakota has a list of thousands of Fargo Forum obituaries online.

Links

• Discover what the National Writers Union offers freelance writers and what the Bay Area Local of the NWU is doing.
• Find the page layout person of your dreams, David Van Ness.
• Get info on rabbit care and behavior from the House Rabbit Society.
• Organize your family tree with an excellent program, The Master Genealogist. (popularly known as “TMG”)
• Learn about women artists at the Varo Registry.
• Find out about women composers and listen to their music.
• Get great web clip art at Jay Boersma’s site, the Archive of Decorative Lettering, and Icon Bazaar.
• Discover a neglected episode in American and world history, the Spanish Civil War, and what those who fought in it are doing today.
• Read about the Spanish Civil War and Milton Wolff (last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion) and order an autographed copy of Milt’s autobiographical novel, Another Hill.
• Learn how you can help combat child abuse with The Survivor’s Voice.

and finally...

• Jump to the top of this page.
• Write to Karla.
• This site, text, and photos are © Karla Huebner 1998.