Karen Houppert

KAREN HOUPPERT is a contributing writer for The Washington Post magazine and also freelances for other magazines, covering social and political issues. As a 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow, she is currently working on a series of articles about drug treatment in Baltimore. A former staff writer for The Village Voice for nearly ten years, she has won several awards for her coverage of gender politics, including a National Women's Political Caucus Award, a 2003 Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award--and was twice an ASME National Magazine Award finalist. She has won numerous fellowships, grants and residencies including the Kaiser Media Fellowship, multiple Nation Institute Investigative grants, a Casey Journalism fellowship, a MacDowell Colony residency, two Mabou Mines artist residencies, and a New York State Council on the Arts grant. Houppert's reporting has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsday, The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Ms, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Redbook, Self, and Parenting. She is the author of two books, a contributor to five, and co-author of the Obie-award winning play "Boys in the Basement" based on her trial coverage of the real-life rape in Glen Ridge, New Jersey--as well as several other plays. Her first book, The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo, Menstruation (pub Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) is an investigation into the sanitary protection industry and cultural history of menstruation. Houppert's most recent book, Home Fires Burning: Married to the Military--for Better or Worse (pub Ballantine, 2005) chronicles a year in the life of various military wives whose husbands are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. An Air Force brat herself who grew up on military bases across the country, Houppert now lives in Baltimore, Maryland.