Karen Houppert
Program Director, Sr. Lecturer
At Johns Hopkins, Karen Houppert is the Program Director and a senior lecturer for the MA in Writing, MA in Science Writing, and MA in Teaching Writing programs.
Houppert is author of three nonfiction books, Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice, which investigates the country’s broken public defender system, Home Fires Burning, which chronicles a year in the life of military wives with husbands deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and The Curse, which examines the culture of concealment surrounding menstruation.
Her reporting has appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, Newsday, The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Ms, and Baltimore City Paper, among other publications. A former staff writer for The Village Voice, she moved to Baltimore in 2006 and began reporting on the city for Urbanite and The Washington Post Magazine and then served as editor of Baltimore City Paper.
In addition to her role at Johns Hopkins, Houppert has taught at New York University, Towson University, and Morgan State University.
Featured Works
- Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice, Karen Houppert, New Press, 2013
- Home Fires Burning, Karen Houppert, Ballantine, 2005
- The Curse, Karen Houppert, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999