Karen Russell

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, and selected for the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” award and the New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list. (She is now decisively over 40.) She has taught literature and creative writing at many places, including the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Williams College, and the University of California-Irvine. She's a board member and volunteer for Street Books, a mobile-library for people living outdoors and a network of care built around a shared love of books. Born and raised in Miami, FL, she lives in Portland, OR with her husband and their amazing kids. Her new novel, The Antidote, is forthcoming from Knopf / Penguin Random House in March, 2025.