Peng Shepherd

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City.

Her second novel, The Cartographers, became a national bestseller, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and received a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her debut, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point.

Shepherd's new novel is All This and More.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Shepherd's reply:

With novels, I’m always either early for or late to the party—half of my TBR pile is advanced copies of upcoming books that editors have sent me and the other half is treasures I’ve found while wandering bookstores or been recommended by friends over the years.

Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić (1988)

This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. I love stories with unusual structures, and narratives that come together fragment by fragment like puzzles. Dictionary of the Khazars is an imaginary history of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic people from the seventh and ninth centuries, written in the form of three mini-encyclopedias which cross-reference and sometimes contradict each other. The effect is mysterious, fascinating, and eerily verisimilar.

Hum by Helen Phillips (forthcoming, Aug 2024)

Helen Phillips is a master of suspense, and Hum is no different. One moment, you think you’rereading a sharp satire of an exhausted mother trying to navigate the dystopian, tech and social media-addicted world we’re all living in right now, and the next, your heart is in your throat. After May loses her job to artificial intelligence and is desperate for money, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it can’t be recognized by surveillance. But when a tiny, innocent mistake suddenly spirals out of control, May’s best chance of proving that she’s a good mother and that her children belong with her lies in the very tech which can now no longer recognize her. It’s a harrowing glimpse into our possible future.

Visit Peng Shepherd's website.

Q&A with Peng Shepherd.

--Marshal Zeringue