Karen Russell: 2025 Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence

We are honored to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Zale-Kimmerling writer-in-residence program by hosting Karen Russell, in conversation with Jami Attenberg. 

Since publishing her debut novel, Swamplandia!, Karen Russell has been celebrated for her imaginative and surreal storytelling. The novel was chosen by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2011, was the winner of the NYPL Young Lions prize, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Russell’s new book, The Antidote, is a gripping Dust Bowl epic set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska and explores themes of memory, history, and climate change, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been and what still could be. Russell is also the author of the celebrated short story collections Orange World, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and the illustrated novella Sleep Donation. 

She has been featured in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. In 2009, she received the 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation. In 2013 she was named a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2012 and 2018 winner of the National Magazine Award for the Fiction category, and a 2013 finalist for the Feature Writing category. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American series, optioned for film and television, and adapted for the stage.

Karen Russell will be in conversation with Jami Attenberg. Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, A Reason to See You Again, and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the USA Today bestseller 1000 Words:A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Jami has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, The Guardian, and others. 

Each year since 1985, the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence Program has brought a renowned woman writer to campus. The Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program was established by Dana Zale Gerard (NC ‘85) and made possible by an annual gift from the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas, Texas. In 2010, the program became fully endowed through a gift from Martha McCarty Wells (NC’63) and known as the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program.