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Karen Russell

Biography

Karen Russell

Karen Russell is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers SWAMPLANDIA! and VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE.

She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has received two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, and was selected for the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” prize and The New Yorker‘s “20 under 40” list (She is now decisively over 40).

She has taught literature and creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of California-Irvine, Williams College, Columbia University, and Bryn Mawr College, and was the Endowed Chair of Texas State’s MFA program. She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile-library for people living outdoors.

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter.

Karen Russell

Books by Karen Russell

by Karen Russell - Fiction, Short Stories

A dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull’s nest. A massage therapist discovers she has the power to heal by manipulating the tattoos on a war veteran’s lower torso. Two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood. And this only scratches the surface of what appears in Karen Russell’s new collection of stories.