Karen Frances McCarthy
Writer and Medium in New York
Karen Frances McCarthy PhD CSNU is a published author, teacher, and progressive Spiritualist medium.
Her books include The Other Irish (Sterling, 2011), Till Death Don't Us Part: A True Story of Awakening to Love After Life (White Crow Books, 2020), and The Re-enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge, 2026). Her next book, Still Here, is forthcoming from White Crow Books in 2027.
Till Death Don't Us Part is a true and transformational story of a former journalist's extraordinary journey from skepticism, through tragedy, to the knowledge that her dead fiancé is communicating from the hereafter. It was widely well received and listed as a #1 New Release on Amazon in its category.
Karen continues to contribute to a variety of media outlets on spirituality, existentialism, healing, and bereavement, including Salon, Huffington Post, and Beliefnet. She is an exponent of writing for mindfulness and spiritual transformation, an advocate for palliative and afterlife education, and has a keen interest in metaphysics, physics, and consciousness theory.
Before the profound and life-changing events of Till Death Don't Us Part, she was a major media journalist covering U.S. politics and an embedded Iraq war correspondent. Her first book, The Other Irish, was supported by Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs as a cultural outreach effort in Ireland's cross-border peace process. It received considerable attention from NPR, BBC, and many other TV, radio, and print media outlets. For this work, she was named one of the top Irish female broadcasters who have made an international impact.
Today, Karen holds a private mediumship and teaching practice in New York and Dublin, and is an Adjunct Instructor at New York University School of Professional Studies. She holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, one of the UK's leading Russell Group universities, where her doctoral research explored re-enchantment and postsecularism in contemporary American ghost literature. She trained at the Arthur Findlay College in England and holds three Certificates of Recognition, in mediumship, spiritual healing, and public speaking, from the Spiritualist National Union.