Karen Gettert Shoemaker
Karen Gettert Shoemaker is the author of the novel The Meaning of Names (Red Hen Press, 2014), a One Book One Nebraska selection for 2016 and Omaha Reads selection for 2014. Her award-winning collection of short stories, Night Sounds and Other Stories was published by Dufour Editions in 2002, and re-published in the United Kingdom by Parthian Press in 2006.
Her fiction and poetry have been published in a variety of newspapers and journals, including The London Independent, Prairie Schooner, and South Dakota Review. Her work has been anthologized in A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers; Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry; Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace; and An Untidy Season.
Shoemaker is a graduate of the University of Nebraska where she received a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism, and both a Master's Degree and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing. Awards for her writing include a Nebraska Press Association Award for Feature Writing, two Independent Artist Fellowship Awards from the Nebraska Arts Council, and a Nebraska Book Award for Short Fiction.
She has taught creative writing and literature classes for more than 25 years and is currently a faculty mentor with the University of Nebraska - Omaha’s MFA in Writing Program. Since 2016 she has been conducting independent writing workshops and working as an independent manuscript consultant and writing coach.