Quick Facts
Biography
Karen Russell (born July 10, 1981) is an American novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 2013. In 2009 the National Book Foundation named her a 5 under 35 honoree.
Early life
Russell, after graduation from Coral Gables Senior High School in Miami in 1999, received a B.A. in Spanish from Northwestern University in 2003 and graduated from the MFA program at Columbia University in 2006.
Her brother, Kent Russell, is also a writer.
Career
Her stories have been featured in The Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and Zoetrope.
She was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" young writer honoree at a November 2009 ceremony for her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
Her second book and first novel, Swamplandia!, about a shabby amusement park set in the Everglades, was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2011. It was also included in the New York Times' "10 Best Books of 2011," and won the New York Public Library's 2012 Young Lions Fiction Award.
She is the recipient of the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, for Spring 2012.
She won the Bard Fiction Prize in 2011 for her book St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. She is currently a visiting writer at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
In 2012, Swamplandia! was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. None of the three finalists, however, received enough votes, and no prize was awarded. Her short story "The Hox River Window," published in Zoetrope: All-Story, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction.
A collection of short stories by Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, was published in February 2013.
In Fall 2013, Russell was a distinguished guest teacher of creative writing in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden.