Jim Shepard (born 1956) is an American novelist and short story writer, who teaches creative writing and film at Williams College.

[1] Shepard's work has been published in McSweeney's, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares,[2] Triquarterly, and Playboy.

Several features characterize Shepard's writings, including a tendency to finish his stories with what Charles Baxter called an "in medias res ending", or an ending in the middle of the plot's events; a thematic focus on what Shepard calls the "costs of certain kinds of ethical passivity"; and a preference for events-driven plots that fight against what Shepard terms "the tyranny of the epiphany", referencing the more psychological, less active plots popularized by short story writers such as James Joyce.

Similarly, Shepard's 2011 collection You Think That's Bad also cites an extensive bibliography, including Avalanches and Snow Safety, The Japanese Earthquake of 1923, Climate Changes and Dutch Water Management, and Satanism and Witchcraft.

Shepard adapted his short story The World to Come, along with novelist Ron Hansen, into a screenplay for the 2020 film of the same name, directed by Mona Fastvold.