Karen Brough writes picture books that hug hearts and make hard conversations easier — one gentle story at a time.
The Short Version:
Karen Brough is a multi-award-winning Australian author and former primary school teacher who writes hope-filled picture books that help children and families navigate grief, big emotions, and the hard seasons of life. Her bestselling book I Can’t Believe They’re Gone has sold over 20,000 copies and is endorsed by leading voices in childhood bereavement and mental health. Karen is also the author of the adult devotional series Be Held by Him, born from her own journey with autoimmune illness, which has won multiple international awards. A self-confessed water baby and daily writer, she believes that words have the power to heal — and that every reader deserves to feel like their heart has been hugged. She lives in Melbourne, Victoria, with her husband Craig, their three children, and one very cheeky, lovable Groodle pup named Gracie.
The Longer Version:
Karen Brough is a multi-award-winning Australian author who writes picture books that feel like a warm hug on a hard day. Her bestselling children’s book ‘I Can’t Believe They’re Gone’ has found its way into over 20,000 homes, classrooms, and therapy rooms — not because it promises easy answers, but because it sits gently beside children and families in their grief and says, “What you’re feeling is okay. You’re not alone.” It’s the kind of book that parents reach for when they don’t know what to say, and counsellors keep close when words need to do the work that time cannot yet do. Endorsed by leading voices in childhood bereavement and mental health — including Dianne McKissock OAM, co-founder of the National Centre for Childhood Grief — Karen’s work has become a trusted companion in some of life’s hardest moments.
But Karen didn’t set out to write books about grief. She set out to write the books she wished she’d had when her own children were young — stories that take feelings seriously, that make hard conversations easier to have, that build connection and strengthen families. As a former primary school teacher who spent years reading to Prep through Grade 2 students, she knows exactly how children process big emotions. She knows what makes them lean in, what makes them feel safe, and what helps them find the words for feelings they didn’t know they were allowed to have. Her companion title ‘The Tale of the Little Black Cloud‘ and her calming bedtime favourite ‘The Coast Is Clear’ continue that same mission: equipping, empowering, and quietly educating children and the adults who love them.
What makes Karen’s work so deeply resonant is that it was born from her own unravelling. She was once the kind of woman who filled every hour with purpose — teaching, volunteering, mothering, loving. Life was full and fast and good, until her body decided it had had enough. A mystery illness crashed into her life without warning, stealing her energy, her career, her ability to leave the house. For months she wobbled, bumped, fell, and cried. Doctors scratched their heads. Tests came back inconclusive. Some days she couldn’t get up off the floor. In the darkest moments, she feared she might die. But slowly, steadily, God gave her a verse each day — a seed of hope planted quietly in the soil of her suffering. And in the space where busyness used to live, something new began to grow.
She started writing again. Not fluently at first — letter by letter, then word by word. What began as journalling conversations with God on her couch became the foundation for her adult devotional series ‘Be Held by Him‘, a multi-award-winning work that has won the International Book Awards, the Firebird Book Awards, and the Pencraft Award, and been recognised as a finalist for the prestigious Eric Hoffer Award and Montaigne Medal. It was written for people in the depths of crisis, the wobbly days of recovery, and the tentative first steps forward. Pastors and leaders have endorsed it. Readers have wept over it. But it was the children’s books that eventually captured her heart most fiercely — because she knows that the earlier a child learns that their feelings are okay, that grief is survivable, and that hope is real, the better equipped they are for everything life brings.
Karen is a self-confessed water baby — ocean body boarding, pool swimming, and bubble bath reading are where her best story ideas strike. She writes daily in her sunroom with her writing buddy, their cheeky, lovable Groodle pup Gracie — though tissue boxes must be kept well out of reach, or before you blink, they’ll cover the backyard. She loves baking warm, comforting things for her family, with a particular talent for hiding vegetables in sweet muffin recipes. Her children have developed a healthy suspicion of baked goods — especially when Mum asks with a little too much intent whether they taste good. She navigates life with autoimmune illness with grace, humour, and an unshakeable faith that God’s fingerprints are everywhere — even on the hard days.
Writing is as natural and necessary to Karen as breathing. She was always painfully shy as a child, and writing became her outlet — a way to communicate the things of her heart from behind the curtain of pages, where words could say what shyness wouldn’t allow. Notes of encouragement, letters to penpals, stories for the sheer joy of it — words were always where she felt most herself. Then life got busy, and the writing got quieter and quieter, until it was barely there at all. But illness, in its strange and tender mercy, cleared the space she always needed. Writing was given back to her, letter by letter, word by word, in the most unlikely of seasons. And she has never taken that gift lightly.
She wants every reader — child or adult — to finish one of her books feeling as though their heart has been hugged. She wants to leave this earth a whole lot better than she came into it. And she believes, with every fibre of her being, that writing is what she was designed and destined to do. Karen lives in Melbourne, Victoria, with her husband Craig, their three children, and Gracie the Groodle, who continues to terrorise the vegetable patch with equal parts mischief and loveability.
