Karen Russell

Karen Russell can look at an austere, fallow landscape and see things most people miss. During a trip to the Sandhills in Nebraska, she looked beyond the endless vistas of sand dunes and prairie grass and found the germ of an idea that became “The Tornado Auction,” a short story from her collection Orange World (Vintage).

Karen Russell is one of the most inventive, immersive writers of our time. In her eight short-story collection, “Orange World,” she excavates layers upon layers of life articulated in the universe, but just out of our reach. And she takes her reader to extraordinary places as she inspects what it means to be alive in this time, and what it means to be human at all times. She plays with the intersection of the natural world and human foibles in wholly original tales that feel both sacred and fleshy.