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. In Refund (Counterpoint Press) —Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Fiction— Bender creates a collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters.

NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2015