Karina Fabian

Early life

Karina (Lumbert) Fabian was born to Steven Lumbert, a Colorado State Patrolman, and Socorro Lumbert, a social worker for the developmentally disabled. She grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, and graduated Valedictorian from South High School in 1985. She attended Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado, on a four-year Air Force Scholarship. She majored in Math, minored in History, graduated with university honors and received a commission in the US Air Force. Her first assignment was to Signals Intelligence Training in San Angelo, Texas, where she met her future husband, Robert Fabian, a first lieutenant at El Dorado Missile Warning station.

Karina began her writing career in earnest in the summer of 1995, taking on writing jobs with the Diocese of Wyoming, and working freelance for nonfiction magazines. Her writing career changed with their location and the situations in their lives. She mostly freelanced, writing on the topics of pregnancy, parenting, and homeschooling, until 2007, when she began to devote herself mostly to fiction writing.

Career

Karina Fabian has had an eclectic writing career; one people might think is laden with contradictions. She has written devotionals as well as satirical horror. Her characters include spacefaring nuns and bisexual actors, all of whom are quite comfortable with themselves. She enjoys adding established religion and faith in her fantasy and science fiction—in fact, in some ways, that sets her apart from other writers of the genre.

Fabian says this stems from her being a character-driven writer. She often speaks in interviews and workshops that religion is a part of the human condition and thus should be a natural part of a character's life and thus, a part of fiction. She does profess little tolerance for books that put preaching above plot and character, no matter what the faith—or politics, or issue. "A story can have a message, but the message cannot be the story."

In 2010, Fabian was given the opportunity to write a small devotional. She recruited her father, Deacon Steven Lumbert, to write it with her. Why God Matters: How to Recognize Him in Daily Life contains short stories from their own faith lives, plus suggestions for contemplation and prayer, Bible quotes and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Founder of the Catholic Writers' Guild

Fabian is one of the founding members of the Catholic Writers' Guild, an American-based but international organization of Catholic writers, editors and illustrators, officially established in 2009. She served as president for the first four of its founding years, then as an officer. In addition, she and author Ann Lewis created online and live writers conferences, sponsored by the Guild. The online conference has been held each spring via chats and forums and regularly features 60–70 workshops and chats on all aspects of writing and faith, plus pitch sessions . The Guild also has programs for evaluating the Catholic content of books (The CWG Seal of Approval) and for excellence in Catholic Writing (the Catholic Arts and Letters Award).

Awards

Karina Fabian has won numerous awards for her works: