Karen Brown is the author of two novels: The Clairvoyants and The Longings of Wayward Girls, and two short story collections—Little Sinners and Other Stories, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the John Gardner Book Award, and Pins and Needles: Stories, recipient of the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has won the O. Henry Prize, appeared in Best American Short Stories and in literary journals and magazines, most recently One Story and The Atlantic. She teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida.