Jim Shephard

“Without a doubt the most ambitious story writer in America,” (The Daily Beast), Jim Shepard delivers a new collection. The World to Come spans borders and centuries, with voices belonging to — among others — English Arctic explorers in one of history’s most nightmarish expeditions, a young contemporary American negotiating the shockingly underreported hazards of our crude-oil trains, eighteenth-century French balloonists inventing manned flight, and two mid-nineteenth-century housewives trying to forge a connection despite their isolation on the frontier of settlement. In each case the personal is the political as these characters face everything from the emotional pitfalls of everyday life to historic catastrophes on a global scale. In his fifth collection, Shepard makes each of these wildly various worlds his own, and never before has he delineated anything like them so powerfully.

“One of the most perceptive, intelligent, and fearless writers of fiction in America today.” — NPR

“His genius resides in his omnivorous curiosity and imaginative inventiveness [and his] stories have the strangeness and bell-like clarity of truth…a vision of literature that is, in its sideways fashion, legitimately unique.” — The Washington Post

Jim Shepard is the author of seven novels and four previous story collections. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and three beagles. He teaches at Williams College.

RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event, but would like to request a signed copy of The World to Come, please order below and put your request in the comments field.