Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction, The Ribalow Prize for Fiction, and the Clark Fiction Prize, as well as six story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner, and the forthcoming The Queen of Bad Influences.   Eight of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three for Pushcart Prizes.  He’s been a recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story, the ALEX Award for Fiction, the Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  For seven years he was a columnist on film for the magazine The Believer, and his film essays have been collected in The Tunnel at the End of the Light.  He’s also written screenplays for two films made from his fiction, And Then I Go (2017) and The World to Come (2020).   He lives in Williamstown with his wife, Karen Shepard, and two beagles, and from 1983 to 2024 taught film and creative writing at Williams College.