Karen Gettert Shoemaker is the author of Night Sounds and Other Stories and the novel The Meaning of Names. 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. Her work has been anthologized in A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers, Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, An Untidy Season and Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry.