Santa Clara Magazine

How would you describe Jim Shepard's writing? "With a near spooky sense of empathy and a wit that finds its mark like lightning" opine the folks at Vanity Fair. There's lots more praise where that came from here.

But more to the point: This author of six novels and four story collections, including the new You Think That's Bad, Shepard will be reading on the Mission Campus on Tuesday, May 10 at 5:45 p.m. The place to be: the Mission Gardens — where the longstanding SCU literary journal, The Santa Clara Review, will be hosting a publication party for the new issue.

SCM readers might have caught Shepard's essay on "Violence in the Movies" or his interview with NFL ref Mike Carey '71. Expect humor of the unflinching sort, and follow as Shepard leads his characters (and readers), as the LA Times puts it, "right up to the point of obliteration, leaving us exhilarated and despairing at once."

He's headed for Seattle and NYC and Cambridge, Mass., next.

 -- Steven Boyd Saum