(Shepard, Karen) Karen Shepard is the author of four novels, An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy’s Wife, Don’t I Know You?, y The Celestials. Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Casa de lata, y Rejas de arado, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in Más, Self, USA Hoy, y el Boston Globe, among others. She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. Bold and unapologetic, Karen Shepard’s Bésame tú a mí (Tin House Books) is inhabited by women who walk the line between various states: adolescence and adulthood, stability and uncertainty, selfishness and compassion. They navigate the obstacles that come with mixed-race identity and instabilities in social class, and they use their liminal positions to leverage power. They employ rage and tenderness and logic and sex, but for all their rationality they’re drawn to self-destructive behavior. Shepard’s stories explore what we do to lessen our burdens of sadness and isolation; her characters, fiercely true to themselves, are caught between their desire to move beyond their isolation and a fear that it’s exactly where they belong.