Bold and unapologetic, Karen Shepard’s Kiss Me Someone is inhabited by women who walk the line between various states: adolescence and adulthood, stability and uncertainty, selfishness and compassion. They navigate the obstacles that come with mixed-race identity and instabilities in social class, and they use their liminal positions to leverage power. They employ rage and tenderness and logic and sex, but for all of their rationality they’re drawn to self-destructive behavior. Shepard’s stories explore what we do to lessen our burdens of sadness and isolation; her characters, fiercely true to themselves, are caught between their desire to move beyond their isolation and a fear that it’s exactly where they belong.

Praise for Kiss Me Someone

“In this captivating collection of stories, Karen Shepard turns her ever-insightful eye on women, and in her gaze is both love and a startling clarity. Readers of all kinds will find much to relish in this voice–from its storytelling surprises to the sharp observations it extends, over and over, to us on the other side of the page.”
-Aimee Bender

“There is such a wondrous variety in these highly accomplished stories. They are rich with invention, with acute (sometimes alarming) awareness, dazzling insight, and pure, word virtuosity.”
-Richard Ford

“Women bear the dark consequences of infidelity, lies, and other betrayals.”
–Kirkus (Read more here)

“This concise, disturbing collection by Shepard (The Celestials) covers several decades of the author’s work, often focusing on troubling experiences of women in the northeastern United States.”
–Publisher’s Weekly (Read more here)

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