Karen Kingsbury

You need to have time to really hear God.

I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.

I'm receiving 300 to 500 letters every week from people telling me that God used my stories to save their marriage or to introduce them to Christ or to heal a relationship that had been broken.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

I definitely would never go back to my 20s. The best is yet to come.

I was raised in the Baptist church... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.