Karen Elizabeth Sharpe grew up in Central Massachusetts to a family with deep roots in the New Hampshire Lakes Region and the White Mountains. Her maternal line traces its roots, beliefs, and colonist predispositions to some of the earliest white European settlers in the New England area. Her paternal line labored its way out of Ireland and Sweden to land firmly in the US immigrant working class of Massachusetts.

She has been a coffee-cart clerk, a babysitter, a divorcee, a journalist and editor, a caterer, a funeral ceremonialist, and a professional fundraiser. She celebrates the healing power of forgiveness in relationships.

Sharpe is a member of the National Baseball Poetry Festival executive committee, a poetry editor at The Worcester Review and the author of two collections of poems, Prayer Can Be Anything (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and This Late Afternoon (Dunn & Co. 2004). Her poems have appeared in many print and online literary journals. She has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net recognitions.