The House That Books Built
AUTHORS KAREN & JIM SHEPARD CREATE A HOME THAT’S BIG ON BOOKS
August 1, 2021 // By Anastasia Stanmeyer // Photographs by John Gruen
Architect Ann McCallum asks each of her clients to write a narrative of what they want in a home. She asks them to put it in prose, to hit all the high points and the mood. To go from the general to the particular—the overall look, the special features, the color palate, the number of rooms, the rooms’ sizes, even the number of sinks in the bathrooms.
“The point is to get them involved and get them on the same page before we meet,” says Ann.
Karen and Jim Shepard were more than up to the assignment. They could even write a whole book on the lead-up to acquiring the property. “We could have given her a three-word narrative of what we wanted in the house: windows and bookshelves,” says Jim. “Our lives were built around the books, and so is our home.”
Karen and Jim have been big fans—and old friends—of Ann and her husband Andy Burr and had hoped that the Williamstown-based architects would design their home one day. “We wanted someone who we could trust aesthetically and also someone who we could talk to openly and directly, and that was Ann and Andy,” says Karen.
What the couple envisioned was not only windows and bookshelves; they wanted smaller bedrooms and bigger common spaces—and a catwalk that would stretch across the wall of books. “There’s something romantic about being able to reach books from up high,” says Ann. “The ten-year-old in me always loved the idea of something tall where you have to get up on different levels to get to the books. We wanted to create something like that here,” adds Jim.
SO VERY HAPPY Jim Shepard often quotes legendary editor and sound designer Walter Murch. “The happiest people he knew were doing something similar to what they were doing when they were 10 years old. When we were 10, we were writing, scribbling in notebooks.”
Jim and Karen’s relationship is just as professional as it is personal. The two are excited to get back on campus this fall at Williams College, now that it’s open again. Karen will teach an introduction to fiction workshop and two sections of an American literature class on the American family. Jim will teach a film tutorial, “Motherhood and Horror,” and a senior thesis workshop.
BIG AND SMALLER SPACES Jim and Karen Shepard didn’t want large bedrooms; instead, they wanted larger common spaces, like the kitchen and their office upstairs, where Karen sits with two of their three beagles. Also, with their children grown up, “we didn’t want to make the mistake of too many bedrooms,” says Jim.
Karen is the author of four novels—An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy’s Wife, Don’t I Know You?, The Celestials, and a collection of stories, Kiss Me Someone. Jim has authored eight novels, including Phase Six and The Book of Aron. His most recent writing adapted to screen was from a set of short stories, The World to Come.
“We are each other’s first readers and bounce ideas off each other,” says Jim.
“Writing is a solitary pursuit,” adds Karen. “I feel very lucky to have somebody within the bounds of that pursuit to talk about issues that come up or questions that I’m wrestling with or whatever. There were long stretches in our lives when we didn’t have that, and this is better.”
Karen’s grandmother was writer Han Suyin, half Belgian and half Chinese. Her mother, Yungmei Tang, who was adopted, was born in Chengdu, China, and raised in Hong Kong and Malaya. She married Sidney Glazier, the son of Russian-Polish immigrant parents. (Glazier produced the Mel Brooks film The Producers, among other films.) They lived in Manhattan, where Karen was born, and they divorced after four years.
“My background is irrelevant,” jokes Jim. He came from a big Italian family in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was the first person in his family to go to college. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, then Brown for grad school. He began teaching at the University of Michigan at the age of 23; three years later he joined the faculty at Williams College.
A LONG HISTORY The land where the Shepards’ home was built is where Karen once rode horses when she was an undergraduate at Williams College.
Karen was a student of Jim’s, and the two kept in touch after she graduated. Karen returned to Williamstown seven years later, to help her father who had rented a house to recuperate after a heart attack. She took care of him while working on her master’s thesis, and during that time reconnected with Jim. Their relationship flourished.
Jim and Karen lived near Hopkins Forest for many years. “I always felt, though, that if you lived in Williamstown, it would be lovely to have a view and see the mountains,” says Karen. They spent ten years off and on looking at houses and land. Then they came back to a tract of the land where Karen once took care of horses while she was an undergrad.
“I got in touch with the people who owned it, whom I knew, and asked if they were interested in selling the land,” says Karen. “They said they were but hadn’t put it on the market again yet.”
Two years later, Jim and Karen purchased the 14 acres and began planning with Ann and Andy. Another friend, Albert Cummings, fourth-generation builder and acclaimed blues musician, built the home. Albert’s wife, Christina, is an integral part of his business. “I loved that for this project, we had three couples who all knew each other and were friends working together,” says Karen.
Ann’s daughter, Mary, babysat for Karen and Jim’s three kids. One of Albert and Christina’s sons (who did excavation work on the house) grew up with the Shepards’ middle child. Since moving in, the “it takes a village” contributions have continued. Their friend Jill Gilbreth has been integral in helping Karen garden and learn about flowers. Laura Schoenbaum, another friend, has done some landscape design work. Tu Le, who runs a local veggie and flower farm, 328North, has been teaching Karen about growing vegetables. Frank Jackson, a local artist, built the raised veggie beds out of leftover siding. John Kleiner and Elizabeth Kolbert, colleagues and fellow writers, gifted the first several fruit trees. “Many others have made the house feel like a gift made up of contributions from so many people from so many corners of our lives,” says Karen.
The home was created to be low-maintenance, made with long-lasting materials. Growing old there was something that they kept in mind, with features such as a shower accessible by wheelchair and handles instead of door knobs. Two bedrooms were designed in another wing of the home that could be used for their children or for someone who would be taking care of them when they got older. The basement also is fully completed and furnished.
All three of Jim and Karen’s children lived with them during the pandemic. Their youngest, Lucy, 19, attended her first year of college remotely. Aidan, 29, a drummer who lives in Brooklyn, set up camp in the finished basement. And Emmett, 24, came from South Africa, where he was developing podcasts for Peace Players International. They also have three beagles—Dino, 16; Teddy 14; and Cosmo, 10. “We loved that the kids were all here,” says Karen. “We didn’t expect the older ones to feel like they had ownership of the house the way they did after lockdown. They were here for nearly a year.”
Karen and Jim sit comfortably on their sofa downstairs, with the bookshelves behind them and an expansive south window view that stretches out to Mount Greylock and the Taconic Ridge. The home’s color palate is simple, as are the countertops and cabinetry. Although modern in design, the house is filled with so much of their lives that creates a sense of warmth—the books, the art, the tchotchkes. The windows are 27 inches above the floor, which meant they didn’t have to spend a lot of money on tempered glass. It also gave them more room for collectibles.
Books of fiction and poetry start on the top two rows of shelves; everything farther below is nonfiction, organized by subject. The books that they have written are tucked away upstairs on their office shelves, where you can also find a 12-inch figure of Nosferatu from the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film. (Jim wrote a novel about the director, F. W. Murnau.) There are also dinosaur figurines, Universal Studio monsters, and paintings throughout the home by artist friends such as Barbara Takenaga, Frank Jackson, Amy Podmore, Steve Levin, Aida Laleian, Jesse Park, William Binnie, and Lisa Nilsson, as well as photographs by Barry Goldstein.
“There’s something about the setting that makes you not want to leave, ever,” says Karen. “Quieting your head really happens here.”
In many of his short stories and books, Jim writes about a world that’s much removed from where he is. “Having this space allows me to roam imaginatively,” says Jim. “All of my work, especially the catastrophe stuff, addresses how fortunate we are in the presence of non-catastrophe. In the face of that, we cherish what we have. This is a fine place to remind us of that. We didn’t grow up in places like this, so we have a keen sense of our good fortune, and that informs our work.”