KAREN HOUPPERT is the Associate Director of the M.A. in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins. She was a contributing writer for The Washington Post magazine for several years, was Editor-in-Chief of Baltimore City Paper and now freelances for many magazines, covering social and political issues. She is also the author of three nonfiction books, including The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo, Menstruation. Her most recent book, Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice, takes the pulse of the public defense system fifty years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright and was selected as one of the Top 10 Books Investigative books of 2013 by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.To learn more about Karen’s work, visit her website.

KAREN HOUPPERT is the Associate Director of the M.A. in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins. She was a contributing writer for The Washington Post magazine for several years, was Editor-in-Chief of Baltimore City Paper and now freelances for many magazines, covering social and political issues. She is also the author of three nonfiction books, including The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo, Menstruation. Her most recent book, Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice, takes the pulse of the public defense system fifty years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright and was selected as one of the Top 10 Books Investigative books of 2013 by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

To learn more about Karen’s work, visit her website.