BIOGRAPHY

Orphaned in Greenwich Village and adopted by New York City schoolteachers, Kari Caulfield has borrowed heavily from her incredibly outrageous life to pen this gripping novel.

Due to an irrepressible wanderlust, Kari Caulfield spent her teens and early twenties traveling throughout the United States and Europe with a backpack on her back. She was searching for the intangible part of herself that was lost at birth. A self-styled artist, writer, musician, poet, a perpetual student and an attorney, it is no wonder when Kari uncovered her roots there was creativity in her blood.

A direct descendant of the famed French poet, novelist, and literary critic, Theophile Gautier, when Kari Caulfield found her birth father, Stephen Gautier Fisher, living with his lover on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, she learned that her own predilection with Theophile Gautier’s famous doctrine, Art for Art’s sake, (l’art pour l’art) was no coincidence–it is encoded on her DNA.

Kari located her young birth mother as her birth mother was about to depart for an extended trip to Majorca, Spain, and she learned, much to her surprise, that she also came from a circus-like troupe of show-biz personalities who had lived all over the world. Among other things, her great-aunts were a vaudevillian contortionist act known as "The Dunn Sisters," and her grand father was press agent to D.W. Griffith when The Birth of a Nation opened in New York. A member of The Daughters of the American Revolution and the Mayflower Society, her maternal grandmother’s Philadelphia family owned the circus where her grand father’s family was employed.

Kari Caulfield’s early life provided just the right balance of intellectual stimulation, freedom and stability. Her Queens, New York home was center-stage to continuous, raucous gatherings, and private academic debates were a constant source of entertainment. Both of Kari’s adoptive parents were elected to public office, and, early on, her father had a daily radio show on WNYE. When Kari’s sister, who was also adopted, needed a double, kidney/pancreas transplant due to diabetes, Kari volunteered to be the donor but was not a suitable match.

Kari’s college career suffered a few false starts due to her preoccupation with exploring, but, eventually, lack of money and a broken down van in the Nevada desert convinced her to pursue a degree in earnest. She left St. John’s University in Queens, New York, where she began as a music major, and graduated with honors from C.W. Post Center of Long Island University, receiving a B.A. in English Literature and a minor degree in the Geological Sciences. After graduation--and an array of odd jobs including bartending, waitress positions and flea-marketing, Kari returned to CUNY Law School at Queens College where she obtained her Juris Doctor degree. She is currently a practicing attorney who served a three year term as a prosecutor for the District Attorney of Queens County, New York.

Throughout the course of Kari’s life the one constant has been her love of writing prose, lyrics and poetry. Well-worn notebooks and scraps of paper detail her every experience. Recently, while on the island of Santorini in Greece, Kari was in what she calls a life-affirming accident when the motor-bike she was driving nearly skid off a cliff. Kari was rendered unconscious and air-lifted to the nearby island of Crete, where she remained in a hospital there for eight days. Among other things, she suffered a fractured skull, broken ribs, and a massive loss of blood, but she awoke with a new sense of joy and wonder for the world and a feeling of complete renewal. A person who has studied world religions, ancient spirituality, various forms of Buddhism and the tarot, Kari has always believed in the possibility of rebirth or transformation through near death experiences, but, she says, no one ever expects divine providence to come knocking on their door.

Kari’s very extended family is spread throughout the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. When she’s home in New York, Kari enjoys entertaining, cooking, gardening, learning language on tape, reading and concerts. She is a member of several Manhattan writer’s groups and she has been a volunteer speaker on adoption panels. Kari lives on Long Island with her long-term partner and also spends time at her family’s brownstone in Manhattan.

Finding her roots did not end her quest. Quite the contrary, as Pretty Blue makes clear, Kari Caulfield’s voyage of discovery has only just begun.