Karyn/Elizabeth was published for the first time when she was in the fourth grade. She finished a historical novel at fifteen. After a successful career teaching art in elementary schools and at the St. Louis Art Museum, she began to dabble in writing again. In 1986 her Waldenbook Award-winning novel LOVE, HONOR AND BETRAY was published under the name Elizabeth Kary.

In 1995 she began to write stories set on the advancing American frontier under the name Elizabeth Grayson. Her eleventh book, MOON IN THE WATER, was set on aboard a riverboat and garnered recognition as both a finalist for the Romance Writers RITA award and for the prestigious Willa Cather Literary Award.

A SIMPLE GIFT, her first contemporary novel written as Karyn Witmer, was a Literary Guild exclusive in 2005. The paperback will be in bookstores in September 2006.

Karyn/Elizabeth still enjoys teaching. She occasionally teaches a course on Popular Fiction at a local college, and is a frequent speaker at writers' conferences around the country. She collects miniature English cottages, enjoys needlework, and has a weakness for antique jewelry. She is happily married to a former advertising executive and devotes much of her time to playing "Auntie Mame" to two her nieces.