| Karen Anderson | |
| Birth Name: | June Millichamp Kruse |
| Birth Date: | September 16, 1932 |
| Birth Place: | Erlanger, Kentucky |
| Death Place: | Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Writer, editor |
| Period: | 1958–2018 |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
Karen Anderson (born June Millichamp Kruse ; September 16, 1932 – March 17, 2018) was an American writer. She published fiction and essays solo and in collaboration with her husband Poul Anderson and others.
Anderson was born June Millichamp Kruse in Erlanger, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.
In the 1980s she co-authored several books in collaboration with her husband, Poul Anderson.
She is noted as the first person to use the term filk music in print[1] and she wrote the first published science fiction haiku (or scifaiku), "Six Haiku" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1962).[2] She also probably coined the term sophont to describe the general class of sapient beings.
In 1950 she, along with three friends, founded a Sherlock Holmes society, naming it the "Red Circle Society." She was, around this time, a friend of Hugh Everett III, of whose theories about parallel universes Poul Anderson later became an enthusiast.[3]
Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1982 novel, Friday, in part to Anderson.[4]
The writer Greg Bear was her son-in-law.