Jim Shepard

Author profile

born

Bridgeport, Connecticut, The United States

gender

male

website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Shepard

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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Shepard was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He received a B.A. at Trinity College in 1978 and an MFA from Brown University in 1980. He currently teaches creative writing and film at Williams College. His wife, Karen Shepard, is also a novelist. They are on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.[1]
[edit]Writing

Shepard's work has been published in McSweeney's, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares,[2] Triquarterly, and Playboy. His short story collection — Like You'd Understand, Anyway — won the Story Prize in 2008, and was nominated for a National Book Award in 2007. The novel Project X won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award. Along with writ...more Shepard was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He received a B.A. at Trinity College in 1978 and an MFA from Brown University in 1980. He currently teaches creative writing and film at Williams College. His wife, Karen Shepard, is also a novelist. They are on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.[1]
[edit]Writing

Shepard's work has been published in McSweeney's, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares,[2] Triquarterly, and Playboy. His short story collection — Like You'd Understand, Anyway — won the Story Prize in 2008, and was nominated for a National Book Award in 2007. The novel Project X won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award. Along with writing novels and short stories, Shepard has also drafted two screenplays, one about Kenneth Donaldson and the O'Connor v. Donaldson case, and the other a movie adaptation of Project X.
Several features characterize Shepard's writings, including a tendency to finish his stories with what Charles Baxter called an "in medias res ending", or an ending in the middle of the plot's events; a thematic focus on what Shepard calls the "costs of certain kinds of ethical passivity"; and a preference for events-driven plots that fight against what Shepard terms "the tyranny of the epiphany", referencing the more psychological, less active plots popularized by short story writers such as James Joyce. Additionally, Shepard writes from the point of view of characters of a wide variety of nationalities.[3]
Shepard's stories often rely on substantial historical research based on real events. His recent collection, Like You'd Understand Anyway, includes stories about the Greek playwright Aeschylus, the Chernobyl disaster and the 1964 Alaska earthquake. The collection acknowledges over sixty non-fiction works that helped to shape the historical detail in the stories. Similarly, Shepard's 2011 collection You Think That’s Bad also cites an extensive bibliography, including Avalanches and Snow Safety, The Japanese Earthquake of 1923, Climate Changes and Dutch Water Management, and Satanism and Witchcraft. "Non c'è ritorno" (66thand2nd) is a previously unpublished collection of JIm Shepard's short stories for the Italian market.[3](less)

10 posts
Jim Shepard's Blog

Jim Shepard isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but he does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from his feed.

Jim Shepard in One Story Magazine!!!

Jim is featured in the new issue of One Story magazine. This is truly a wonderful, wonderful literary publication and well worth a subscription.

Read the post about the new issue here.

Here is an excerpt from the story:

Fair and very cold. This morning, ice in our bedroom for the first time all winter, and in the kitchen, the water froze on the potatoes as soon as they were washed. Landscapes of...

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Published on March 15, 2012 13:27 • 16 views

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Jim Shepard's Books

Average rating: 3.74 · 7,385 ratings · 1,174 reviews · 28 distinct works · Similar authors

	Like You'd Understand, Anyway 3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 1,006 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Love and Hydrogen: New and Selected Stories 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 454 ratings — published 2004 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Project X 3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 avg rating — 494 ratings — published 2004 — 8 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	You Think That's Bad 3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 avg rating — 334 ratings — published 2011 — 6 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nosferatu by Jim Shepard, Ron Hansen (Introduction) 3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 58 ratings — published 1999 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Batting Against Castro 3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 38 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Master of Miniatures 4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 2010 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Kiss of the Wolf 3.33 of 5 stars 3.33 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1994 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ploughshares, Fall 2010 4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2010	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lights Out in the Reptile House 3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1990 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Jim Shepard

“You get lonely, is what it is. A person's not supposed to go through life with absolutely nobody. It's not normal. The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself. It's a loop and you gotta do something to get out of it.”
― Jim Shepard

tags: loneliness, relationships, weirdness

76 people liked it

“It turns out that our intuition is a greater genius than we are.”
― Jim Shepard

5 people liked it

“What makes us threaten the things we want most?”
― Jim Shepard, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales

tags: love, philosophy, relationships, trust

2 people liked it

See all Jim Shepard's quotes »

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