Karen Bender is the author of the novels Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms (2013) and the story collection Refund (2015). The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, she has had stories anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. A graduate of UCLA as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Bender lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Photograph by Jonah Siegel.