Karen Bender

Karen Bender
NationalityAmerican
Genrenovel
Notable awardsRona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award

Karen E. Bender is an American novelist.

Biography

Bender has taught fiction writing at the Writer's Voice program in New York, as well as the MFA programs at Antioch Los Angeles, Chatham University, Tunghai University in Taiwan, and the University of North Carolina Wilmington.[1] She is currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She has received grants from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Choice.[2]

Karen E. Bender is the author of the short story collection Refund, which was on the shortlist for the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award,[3] and the novels A Town of Empty Rooms and Like Normal People; Like Normal People was a Los Angeles Times Bestseller, and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Writing about "A Town of Empty Rooms," reviewer S. Kirk Walsh said in the Boston Globe,

In the very best of fiction, an intimate, spiritual communion momentarily transpires between reader and author. In the case of Bender’s novel, these moments occur during these flawless passages of authentic longing and isolation. Like some of today’s best contemporary realistic authors, Bender skillfully excavates and animates the human fragilities and missteps of life, transporting the reader deeper into the narrative and the interior lives of her characters.[4]

Her short stories have appeared in magazines, including The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares,[5] Zoetrope, Story, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Narrative, The Harvard Review and The Iowa Review. Her fiction has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South and The Pushcart Prize series and has been read as part of the "Selected Short" series at Symphony Space in New York.

She has written nonfiction for The New York Times,[6] Real Simple,[7] O magazine [8] and others.

Works
  • "The Curse of the Aspiring Messiah", Southeast Review, 2006
  • Like Normal People, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. ISBN 978-0-618-12692-7 OCLC 47232137
  • A town of empty rooms, Berkeley, CA Counterpoint 2013. ISBN 9781619020696, OCLC 944086783
  • Refund : stories, Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, 2015. ISBN 9781619024557, OCLC 982157196
  • New Order : Stories., Counterpoint Press 2018. ISBN 9781640090996, OCLC 1077238067

References
  1. "Writers Corner, NEA". Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  2. "Karen E. Bender - Official website of author Karen E. Bender". karenebender.com. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  3. "FOC Award". Munsterlit.ie. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  4. "Book review: 'A Town of Empty Rooms,' by Karen E. Bender - The Boston Globe". Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  5. "Read By Author - Ploughshares". www.pshares.org. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  6. Bender, Karen E. "The Accidental Writer". Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  7. "What My Family Learned From a Year of Living With Creepy Houseguests". Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  8. "The Green Road". Retrieved 18 October 2018.
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