Karen Russell

Karen Russell, born in 1981, is an American novelist and short story writer. Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia!, follows a family running a struggling alligator farm in the Florida Everglades and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other titles include the story collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Antidote, and the National Book Foundation named Russell a 5 Under 35 honoree in 2009, while the MacArthur Foundation awarded a Genius Grant.