Karen E. Bender is the author of the novels A Town of Empty Rooms and Like Normal People. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Story, The Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, Guenica, and other magazines. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, and have won two Pushcart prizes. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, novelist Robert Anthony Siegel, and their two children. Learn more >