(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – Author Jim Shepard, who teaches English at Williams College, will give a fiction reading in Griffin Hall, room 3, at Williams College on Monday, December 7, at 7pm. Shepard is the author of six previous novels and four story collections. His most recent novel, “The Book of Aron” (2015), tells the story of a young boy in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, was a finalist for the Kirkus Award and is a finalist for the Carnegie Medal in Fiction. This event is free and open to the public.

Shepard’s third collection, “Like You’d Understand Anyway,” was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Story Prize. His previous novel, “Project X,” won the 2005 Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, as well as the ALEX Award from the American Library Association.

Shepard’s short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, the Paris Review, the Atlantic, Esquire, and the New Yorker. He was also a columnist on film for the magazine The Believer.  Five of Shepard’s stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize.

In 2005, Shepard was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. He holds a B.A. from Trinity College and an M.F.A. from Brown University. He teaches fiction writing and film at Williams.