Karen Polinsky is a high school English teacher and writer from Bainbridge Island, Washington. Twenty years ago she drove to the Pacific Northwest from Boston with her three children in a beat-up Toyota station wagon. Not long after, she encountered the nineteenth century S’Klallam historian Mary Ann Lambert in a book of primary documents gifted to her by the director of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Cultural Resources. Her fascination with Lambert, a woman-of-vision, eventually turned into, Dungeness, a revisionist-history coming-of-age novel inspired by her life. Also a playwright, she has had a half-dozen one-acts produced on Bainbridge Island and in Seattle, and has written scripts for two short films. Polinsky was recognized with the Patsy Collins Award for Environmental Educators in 2012.



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