Stern’s fic­tion, with its deep ground­ing in Yid­dish folk­lore, has prompt­ed crit­ics such as Cyn­thia Ozick to hail him as a suc­ces­sor to Isaac Bashe­vis Singer. He has won five Push­cart Prizes, an O’Henry Award, a Push­cart Writ­ers’ Choice Award and a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award. For thir­ty years, Stern taught at Skid­more Col­lege, the major­i­ty of those years as Writer-in-Res­i­dence. He has also been a Ful­bright lec­tur­er at Bar Elan Uni­ver­si­ty in Tel Aviv, the Moss Chair of Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mem­phis, and Lec­tur­er in Jew­ish Stud­ies for the Prague Sum­mer Sem­i­nars. Stern splits his time between Brook­lyn and Bal­ston Spa, New York.