Areas of teaching include playwriting and new work development.

Karen Zacarías' plays have been produced throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Recent productions include The Book Club Play and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents at Roundhouse Theatre and Legacy of Light at Arena Stage. Her play The Sins of Sor Juana was the winner of the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play at the 2000 Helen Hayes Awards, and the 1998 National Hispanic Playwrights' Project at South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, Calif.). She is also winner of the 1998 D.C. Mayor's Award for Outstanding Emerging Artist and a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference and the Jane Chambers National Women's Playwrights' Competition.

Among her other produced plays are The Bare-chested Man, Blue Buick in My Driveway and A Rope Through the Fixture. Her plays for young people include the long-running hit The Magical Piñata, Choosing Nine, The 13th Summer of William and Pilar and a new adaptation of Ferdinand the Bull. She has had commissions from Woolly Mammoth Theatre, South Coast Repertory and Imagination Stage. Zacarias is the founder and artistic director of Young Playwrights' Theater, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering literacy, dialogue and conflict resolution through playwriting in inner-city schools. She earned a master's in playwriting from Boston University studying with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott and Elie Wiesel. Born in Mexico, she currently lives with her husband, Rett, in Washington, D.C., and Oaxaca, Mexico.