Jim Shepard is the author of four previous collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which won The Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his short fiction has often been selected for Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. The most recent of his seven novels, The Book of Aron, won the PEN/New England Award, the Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature, the Harold U. Ribalow Book Prize for Jewish literature, and the Clark Fiction Prize. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Karen Shepard, his three children and three beagles, and he teaches at Williams College.