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Sep 22, 2026
National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard joins award-winning comedian Alex Edelman in conversation for the launch of Shepard’s new collection of short fiction, The Queen of Bad Influences — 12 stories spanning six centuries, cementing Shepard as one of our most audacious writers of historical fiction.
Across more than three decades — from his stunningly moving, acclaimed Holocaust novel The Book of Aron to his mischievously inventive, fictionalized biography of filmmaker F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu — Jim Shepard has brought distant eras into crystalline focus with profound intelligence and emotional depth. But none of his books span so wide a range as The Queen of Bad Influences.
From 16th-century Madrid and pre-Revolutionary Boston to Civil War America, the deck of the Lusitania, and communities reshaped by hurricanes, wars, wildfires, and everyday human failure, Shepard follows a bright thread of humanity through the centuries, exploring how ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances, all while remaining equally attentive to the quieter forces that shape us: love, friendship, and longing. Shepard’s gift lies in making history feel immediate — not by retelling familiar events, but by revealing the individual lives unfolding within them.
Shepard has long been admired by readers and fellow writers alike: “he’s the best we’ve got,” says Dave Eggers. Find out why in an evening of reading and conversation as he launches The Queen of Bad Influences — exploring Shepard’s deft expansion of the short story form and what draws him, again and again, to the moments when individual lives intersect with the forces of history.
“A deft, audacious artist.” — Norman Rush
“Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer — compassionate, funny, and fearless.” — George Saunders
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