Description:

Karen Cotton has been a writer professionally for 29 years. She has been self-employed for 12 years. She owns a music studio, an online magazine, she is an author of three books, a musician with an album Watch Me Shine that came out in March of 2023 with AOK Records in Nashville, and she also dances, acts, does photography and art. She has two collections of audio interviews, photos, lanyards, and autographs of all of the people she has met while she was reporting and as a pen pal to celebrities when she was a child. The Karen Cotton collections are at the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center and the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum. Her photography has been juried into galleries and museums in Wyoming and Denmark. She has been awarded four Individual Professional Artist Development Grants from the Wyoming Arts Council for her books and songwriting and an NEA Fellowship for her reporting. Her book Carol and Santa has had movie interest. It is currently in screenplay form now and the screenplay was written by Lorenzo Leonard. The screenplay process was funded by a grant from the Wyoming Arts Council. She does writing and photography workshops for all ages. She also teaches piano.