Karen Greenbaum-Maya worked as a clinical psychologist for 35 years. She earned her B.A. from Reed College in 1973 and her Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology in 1982. She has managed a congressional campaign, has sung in a local opera company, and has developed cookie recipes for commercial use. She reviewed restaurants for the Claremont Courier for five years, sometimes in heroic couplets, sometimes imitating Hemingway. She shared her life with her late husband for 34 years, which were not enough.She returned to poetry in 2008. Since then, her poems received Special Merit and Honorable Mention in the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest from Marge Piercy and from B.F. Fairchild. Other poems have appeared in B O D Y, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Comstock Poetry Review, Heron Tree, Waccamaw, Spillway, Measure, and Rappahannock Poetry Review. She co-curates Fourth Saturdays, a monthly poetry series in Claremont, California, and Garden of Verses, an annual day-long reading of nature poems in Claremont's California Botanic Garden.