June 29, 1940 – December 8, 2023

Karen Hedwig Backman died December 8, 2023, after several weeks of illness. She was born June 29, 1940, to Elis and Signe Backman in Mitchell, South Dakota. She grew up in Artesian, South Dakota, and graduated from Artesian High School in 1958. She attended Dakota Wesleyan University in South Dakota and later earned her Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude in journalism, from the University of Pittsburgh in 1976.

During her life she was a poet, a newspaper columnist and avid letter writer, and political gadfly. She worked for several firms in clerical or writer roles. She owned and ran the Dragon’s Nest store in Albuquerque. Primarily she did public relations, paid or as a volunteer, especially for feminist and liberal political issues. She worked for Pittsburgh Action Against Rape (PAAR), the National Organization for Women (NOW), helped found the Freedom Feminist Federal Credit Union in Pittsburgh (and was its president at one point), and facilitated many women’s festivals and conferences in the US and Canada. She was an active Code Pink Peace protester and Democrat through her retirement years.

She had letters to the editor published in the WSJ, the Federal Way Mirror where she wrote an opinion column as well, and the Dothan Eagle (Alabama), and probably many other newspapers. The Dothan Eagle editor once told her he was afraid to publish one of her better (but incendiary) letters lest someone shoot her.

She is survived by three children, Jennifer Marsden (Ronald King), Joseph Marsden, and Gabrielle Marsden (Todd Kaufmann), 2 grandchildren, Cecilia Wilson (Mitchell) and Veronica King, and one great-grandchild Felix Wilson. She was preceded in death by her parents and her brother, Gene Fisher, and her husband Jeff Burns.

Her ashes will be scattered on her parents’ farm as were her parents’.