“Words are the breath, and soul of me—at times, my sole deliverance”
MEET THE AUTHOR
Annie Moon aka Karen Anne Coccioli was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on September 13, 1949. She’s proud of her Italian heritage and grew up in a multi-generational family with her maternal aunt, grandmother and sister all under one roof. Like the diverse neighbors that surrounded her as a child—Italians, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Jews—families took care of each other. On many occasions despite their meager circumstances, her father took in extended kin for days or months causing more than one adult to sleep on a cot in the kitchen.
Her parents had limited education but loved to read. Her father had a fascination for learning about the American Civil War and Karen remembers taking family trips to all the battlefields within a day’s car drive. Her mother read historical biographies. The lives of Jackie Kennedy and Mary, Queen of Scots ranked among her favorites.
Perhaps she inherited her love for books from her parents but writing took seed from a different source. The first line from her novel, Paradise reads I came into life stuttering. Or so she believed because her earliest memories are of a bumbling child hearing the words in her head but unable to push them out. Since language is the avenue from which we speak ourselves, the self is invisible for a stutterer, lost in the absence of speech. The written word became her manner of expression and she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t scribbling on something, including the inside pages of her mother’s Italian cook books.
Karen’s love of writing and books coupled with her identity as a gay woman manifested a desire to delve into academic studies that married her innate interests. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature, especially within the context of feminist meditations regarding gender identity, sexuality and madness. Her mad hatter and fun sides both come out to play in her writing.
When Karen isn’t at her laptop wrangling over the perfect word, she is usually reading one of the many authors she follows in the world of gay romance.