Karen Karydes
Karen Huston Karydes had a twenty-four-year career at the Arlington County, Virginia Department of Libraries, focusing on adult acquisitions and reference. She then ran the library for inmates inside the Arlington County Detention Center for five years. She has master’s degrees in English from New York University and Library Science from the University of Maryland. At sixty, she pursued her interest in literary biography by entering the University of Maryland’s Ph.D. program in English Language and Literature. After receiving her degree in 2010, she returned to full-time public library work as the Acquisitions Librarian for the Talbot County Free Library in Maryland. Her book, Hard-Boiled Anxiety: The Freudian Desires of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Their Detectives, is based on her dissertation.
