Carole Burns's debut novel, The Same Country, an exploration of race, class and violence in the Obama-era United States, was described by author Gish Jen as a novel that "unearths long-buried truths that remain the truths of America." The Same Country was reviewed or featured in nation.cymru, Wales Arts Review, the Western Mail and Buzz Magazine, and listed as a 2023 Best fiction book by the Wales Arts Review.
Prior to publication, the opening chapters of the novel was shortlisted in The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest.
Burns's short story collection, The Missing Woman and Other Stories, was the recipient of the 2015 John C. Zacharis First Book Award, given annually by the prestigious U.S. literary magazine Ploughshares. American Book Review described the stories as “a precise, almost clinical look at the emotional landscape of womanhood in the contemporary world.”
More recently, her story "The Mother I Never Knew" was shortlisted in Mslexia's 2021 Short Story Conteset and published in Best Women’s Short Fiction 2021.
Burns regularly interviews other writers, and her book Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between, W.W. Norton, 2008 was based on interviews conducted for washingtonpost.com with 43 leading writers. In the book, authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Colm Tóibín, Edward P. Jones, Anthony Doerr, Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt, and Alice McDermott explore the creative process of writing novels, short stories and memoir. Reviewed or featured in Washington Post, BBC, NPR, Irish Public Radio, Financial Times, and O: The Oprah Magazine.
As well as writing fiction, she reviews books, interviews authors and writes essays for publications including the Washington Post and LitHub.
