October 11, 2007—Hartford, Conn.—  Jim Shepard, the author of six novels and two collections of stories, has been named a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award in fiction for his latest work, Like You’d Understand, Anyway, it was announced yesterday in Philadelphia.

Shepard, the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., received his B.A. from Trinity in 1978 and his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1980. Two of the professors who most influenced his work while at Trinity were former  Professor Stephen Minot and the late Professor Hugh Ogden.

Like You’d Understand Anyway is a collection of 11 first-person short stories “that offer an eclectic overview of the human experience,” according to Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher of the work.

Shepard’s book, wrote Daniel Handler in the Sept. 23 New York Times Book Review, “serves as a testament not only to Jim Shepard’s talents but also to the power of the short story itself, forged from the world with a sharp eye and a careful ear, serving no agenda but literature’s primary and oft-forgotten one: the delight of the reader.”

The stories in the book range from the 19th century Australian frontier to Hadrian’s Wall to the 1986 Chernobyl tragedy.

Shepard’s other books include Project X, Nosferatu, Love and Hydrogen and Batting Against Castro.  His stories have been included three times in the Best American Short Stories. He was awarded a Pushcart Prize for Hadrian’s Wall in 2006, the Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction for Project X  in 2005 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Award in 2005.