Judith Karpova grew up in Newark, New Jersey. She attended the University of Wisconsin during the Vietnam War era, and became an activist in response to it. She was a member of the Wisconsin Draft Resistance Union, SDS, and staffed the Oleo Strut GI coffeeshop in Fort Hood Texas when the Fort Hood Three were organizing their fellow GI's on the base. In the 80's she initiated a Nuclear Free Zone campaign in New Jersey which resulted in Hoboken becoming a Nuclear Free Zone and Jersey City and Union County following suit. She was a participant in the WTO demonstrations in Seattle and worked with the Direct Action Network in organizing other anti-corporate globalization demonstrations.

In February 2003, unable to sit on the sidelines while yet another war was contrived which would result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths, and the destruction of a country, if not an entire region, Judith went to Iraq as a Human Shield. She joined over 400 people from 32 countries. They lived on UN designated civilian infrastructure sites, like water treatment plants, to hopefully prevent them from being bombed as they were in the first Gulf War, with catastrophic results for the civilian population. Judith left shortly before the war and returned home to a letter from the US Treasury Department stating their intent to prosecute her for supporting the economy of Iraq by allegedly buying food to eat while she was in the country. The brief for this case has gone through the lower courts and will be presented to the Supreme Court in a month.

Judith has written a book about her time in pre-war Iraq, as she was one of the last Western people to see it intact, and recovering from the sanctions. These were breaking down, because they had become an international scandal. But this was not permitted. The recovery of Iraq was not permitted. It is a memoir with a hybrid element of journalistic reportage.

Judith has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from New York University. She lives in Kerhonkson, in Ulster County.