I’m a writer, editor and translator with 30 years of experience in journalism and a lifelong interest in writing books. I’m the author of Manic Dawn: The Strange Adventures of a Mad Father and a Loyal Son, the shocking true story of my father’s epic battles with bipolar mania.

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I also wrote The Cult That Snapped: A Journey Into The Way International, the definitive exposé of a major American cult. And I wrote Frommer’s Costa Rica 2017, a guidebook to “the happiest country in the world,” published by one of the leading names in travel books. 
 

I was born in Arkansas and grew up in California, Venezuela, British Columbia, Mexico, Alaska and Bolivia, the younger of two boys in a globe-trotting family of international educators.
 

I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and history in 1989. I joined the San Jose Mercury News as a copy-editing intern and worked there for 25 years, departing in 2014 as national editor.
 

I moved to Costa Rica in 2015 and became travel editor of the Tico Times and senior writer at Howler Magazine. I currently offer writing, editing and Spanish-English translation services through my company Writers on the Storm. I live in Costa Rica’s south Caribbean with my girlfriend and two cats.

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Write me at karlkahler(at)gmail.com.