Biography

Karen Dee Carpenter is known for My Scarlet Letter, a finalist in the Akira Kurosowa Memorial Foundation competition, awarded "Best Graduate Film" by five festivals, and had a national theatrical release as part of the GenArt/Acura Screening series. Her subsequent film, link=tt1126524], was honored with the prestigious Princess Grace Award and screened at festivals internationally. Recently, her short film You Try Living Here (2016) was on the festival circuit and screened at the New York City Independent, New Filmmakers NY, Chicago Arthouse and San Antonio Film Festival among others.

Karen's screenplays have been finalists in American Gem Short Script Competition and CineStory Screenwriting Awards and she was invited to participate in the IFP Film Market with the feature-length script, Pick-Up. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Partners of the Americas Travel Grant for an exhibition of her paintings in Brazil. Her paintings are part of the collections of the Época Gallery, in Salvador, Bahia and the University of Delaware Permanent Collection.

Karen received her M.F.A degree in Film and Media Arts at Temple University. She has produced several short films for which she has received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in both Filmmaking and Screenwriting.

Karen's full-length theatrical play, Street Play, was a Semifinalist for the 2018 O'Neill American Playwright's Conference and previously workshopped at the Kennedy Center Summer Writing Intensive. Her short play, You Try Living Here, was selected for the ATHE Play Development Workshop in Washington, D.C. and had a workshop performance at The Other Space Theater in Los Angeles and was published by Leicester Bay Theatricals in 2017 as part of the New Play Development Workshop anthology of new works.

In December 2016 Karen was invited to participate in the Nautilus Composer-Librettist Workshop at The Theater @ Boston Court under the direction of Ben Krywosz and Pulitzer Prize nominated composer Roger Ames. Through this experience Karen wrote several libretti, which included the virtual reality opera "Muse of the Underworld." This project was chosen to be presented at Stereopsia, an international symposium held in Brussels in December 2017. She attended Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and graduated with a B.F.A. degree in Painting.
- IMDb mini biography by: Dianah Zimoy