Jim Shepard (born 1956) was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He received a B.A. at Trinity College in 1978, his MFA from Brown University in 1980. He currently teaches creative writing and film at Williams College. Shepard's work has been published in McSweeney's, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Triquarterly, and Playboy. His short story collection: Like You'd Understand, Anyway won the Story Prize in 2008 and was nominated for a National Book Award in 2007. Project X won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award.
Shepard's stories often rely on substantial historical research. His most recent collection Like You'd Understand Anyway includes stories about the Greek playwright Aeschylus and the Chernobyl disaster. The collection acknowledges over sixty non-fiction works that helped to shape the historical detail in the story.