In 2006, Karlin was consulting producer and writer for "Shared Weight", a series of hour-long radio programs involving interviews with writers, film makers and artists in Vietnam, and journeys of reconciliation. The programs were done by the Center for Emerging Media for National Public Radio. He wrote the script for "Wandering Souls", a follow up program, in 2009. Karlin's short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many literary magazines, including "Antietam Review", "Crab Orchard Review", "Glimmer Train", "Indiana Review", "Manoa", "Michigan Quarterly Review", "Nimrod", "North American Review", "Prairie Schooner", "Witness", and "War, Literature & the Arts". His essay about Maryland appeared in the landmark anthology T"hese United States: Portraits of America," published by Nation Books in 2003, and his essay “Kissing the Dead”, paired with Catherine Leroy’s photographs, appeared in her book "Under Fire:" "Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam" (Random House, 2005). His articles and book reviews have appeared in "The Baltimore Sun", "The Washington Post", "The Nation", and the "Los Angeles Times". Karlin has received five State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Paterson Prize in Fiction the Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award, and the University of Massachusetts Juniper Prize for Fiction 2019 for his novel "A Wolf by The Ears". "Prisoners" was named an Outstanding Novel of 1998 in the "Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook" and "The Wished-For Country" was selected as an Outstanding Novel in the 2002 Yearbook. "Love After War" was named one of the best books of the year of 2003 by the "San Francisco Gate". Karlin lives in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, and was married for 44 years to Ohnmar Thein Karlin, who passed away in 2020. Their son, Adam Karlin, is a travel writer, most of whose work is published through Lonely Planet. His daughter-in-law, Rachel Hogue works for the Environmental Protection Agency. He has two grandchildren, Sanda and Isaac.