Karen Dabrowska was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1956. She worked as a journalist on the Evening Post in Wellington before migrating to the UK in 1985 where she graduated with an MA in international journalism. Her Arab class mates introduced her to the Middle East and her fascination with the region led to a career writing about the region. She was editor of New Horizon a Middle Eastern/Islamic publication dealing mainly with the politics and culture of the Islamic world and helped set up a number of publications for the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein including Iraq Update and Baghdad. When New Horizon closed she worked as London correspondent for JANA News Agency and contributed articles on a freelance basis to The Middle East, The Guardian, Islamic Tourism and other publications. She joined the Sudanese National Council, a medical charity, as development officer in August 2011 and is a board member of the Kurdish Aid Foundation. Her books include: Addis Ababa: A guide to the country and its people, The Libyan Revolution: Diary of Qadhafi’s Newsgirl in London, Into the Abyss: Human Rights Violations and the Suppression of the Popular Movement for Change, as well as a collection of short stories: Melancholy Memories: Foreign Dreams. In the course of her work she has visited over 30 countries including Afghanistan, Australia, Fiji, Oman, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan, Western Sahara, Ethiopia, USA, Iran, Yemen, St Lucia, North Cyprus, Turkey, Canada, Poland, Ukraine, Kenya and Tanzania.