Karen Brown was born in Connecticut. Her first collection of short stories, Pins and Needles, was the recipient of AWP’s Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Her work has appeared twice in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and in many literary journals. Currently, she lives in Tampa, Florida and teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida.