Karen E. Bender is an author of short stories and novels, and an editor. She is Fiction Editor of the online literary magazine Scoundrel Time. She is a professor of creative writing at Alma College, and has taught fiction writing at the Writer's Voice program in New York, as well as the MFA programs at Antioch Los Angeles, Chatham University, Tunghai University in Taiwan, and the University of North Carolina Wilmington.Bender's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, Story, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Narrative, The Harvard Review and The Iowa Review. Her fiction has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South and The Pushcart Prize series, and has been read as part of the "Selected Short" series. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Real Simple, and O magazine.Bender's story collection "Refund" was shortlisted for the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her first book, the novel "Like Normal People," was published in 2000 and was both a Los Angeles Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. She co-edited the nonfiction anthology "Choice."