Book Release Party for Karen Finneyfrock’s Starbird Murphy and the World Outside

Karen Finneyfrock, a beloved former writer-in-residence at Hugo House, poet, and young-adult novelist, is releasing a new book: Starbird Murphy and the World Outside. On June 18, she’ll read a brief excerpt from the new novel, participate in a Q&A moderated by former Hugo House program director and writer Brian McGuigan, and do a book signing.

About the Book

In her sixteen years of life, Starbird has never touched a dollar bill. She’s never been in a car. She’s never used a cell phone. That’s because Starbird has always lived on the Free Family Farm, a commune in the woods of Washington state. But all that is about to change. When Starbird gets her “Calling” to be a waitress at the Free Family’s restaurant in Seattle, she decides to leave behind the only home she’s ever known. Nothing could have prepared Starbird for the World Outside, or for what it would teach her about the Family—and herself.

“Readers will feel like they’re experiencing every step of Starbird’s eye-opening journey firsthand.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With a lesser author at the helm, this story would be marred by stereotypes. In the hands of poet Finneyfrock, Starbird gradually and realistically finds her inner voice emerging from a controlled mind.” —Kirkus

Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist and teaching artist in Seattle, WA. Her young adult novel, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door, was published by Viking Children’s Books in 2013. Her second book of poems, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, was released on Write Bloody press in 2010.  She is a former Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers-in-the-Schools program.