Karen Russell is an American novelist and short story writer. She was born in Miami, Florida in 1981 and graduated from Columbia University in 2005. Her debut novel, Swamplandia!, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has also published two collections of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Columbia University.