Karr's memoirThe Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for more than a year and named one of the year's best books. It explores her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. Karr's friend Tobias Wolff encouraged her to write her personal history, but she has said she took up the project only when her marriage fell apart.[11] She followed the book with a second memoir, Cherry (2000), about her late adolescence and early womanhood.[12]
Karr's third memoir, Lit: A Memoir, which she says details "my journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic",[13] came out in 2009. The memoir describes Karr's time as an alcoholic and the salvation she found in her conversion to Catholicism. She calls herself a cafeteria Catholic.[14]
Karr's Pushcart Award-winning essay, "Against Decoration", was originally published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991) and later reprinted in Viper Rum. In "Against Decoration", Karr takes a stand in favor of content over style. She argues that emotions must be directly expressed and that clarity should be a watchword: characters are too obscure, the presented physical world is often "foggy" (imprecise), references are "showy" (both non-germane and overused), metaphors overshadow expected meaning, and techniques of language (polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives") only "slow a reader's understanding".
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer", was originally published in Poetry (2005). In it, Karr writes about moving from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic of the decidedly "cafeteria" kind, yet one who prays twice daily with loud fervor from her "foxhole". She argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us.[18]
Karr was married to poet Michael Milburn for 13 years.[22][23] Some time after their divorce, she began dating author David Foster Wallace, whose alleged abusive behavior toward Karr—which included throwing a coffee table at her and harassing her five-year-old son—is documented in his 2012 biography.[24]
Although she has converted to Catholicism, Karr has some views at odds with those of the Catholic Church, such as supporting abortion rights, and has advocated for women's ordination to the priesthood. She has described herself as a feminist since the age of 12.[14]
^Almon, Bert. "Karr, Mary 1955–." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement 11, edited by Jay Parini, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002, pp. 239-256. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Accessed 28 Jan. 2017.
