Karen Russell Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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Karen Russell
Photo: © Annette Hornischer

Karen Russell

Karen Russell Biography

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's website

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Interview

Karen Russell talks about her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and her first novel, Swamplandia!.

In two separate interviews Karen Russell talks about her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and her first novel, Swamplandia!

A Conversation with
Karen Russell about her first novel, Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! and your story collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, are both set in a sort of enchanted, Lewis Carroll-like version of North America. What draws you to these worlds and how do you create them? 

Well, I think I owe a big debt to Lewis Carroll himself, probably, and other folks who I read as a kid like Ray Bradbury and Peter S. Beagle and Stephen King and Madeleine L'Engle. My favorite books were always the ones where I felt like an alternate world had been created in some star cradle by the author and, in an amazing feat of compression, shrunken down into a 200-page book (or, in the case of Ray Bradbury, a three page story about a country uncle with green wings).  I think I wanted to create strange but familiar snow-globe worlds almost as soon as I started reading these books
 
I also think I'm drawn to imaginary places because it's an architecture that any reading consciousness can enter - as a kid I used to love ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Karen Russell at BookBrowse
The Antidote jacket Orange World and Other Stories jacket Vampires in the Lemon Grove jacket Swamplandia! jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Karen Russell but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Chris Adrian

    Chris Adrian

    Chris Adrian was born in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he received his MD from East Virginia Medical School. "Every Night for a Thousand Years", the New Yorker story from which this ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Swamplandia!

    Try:
    A Better Angel
    by Chris Adrian

  • Nancy Au

    Nancy Au

    Nancy Au is a genderqueer, bisexual artist and teacher living in Oakland, California. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in anthropology, and has an MFA from San Francisco State University where she teaches ... (more)

We recommend 54 similar authors


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