Wayne Karlin has published eight novels: A Wolf by the Ears, Marble Mountain, The Wished-For Country, Prisoners (all with Curbstone Press); Lost Armies, The Extras, Us (all with Henry Holt); Crossover (Harcourt), and a short story collection: Memorial Days (Texas Tech University Press, 2023), as well as three works of non-fiction: Rumors and Stones, War Movies (Curbstone Press), and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam (Nation Books).

His books have also been published in England, and in translation in Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Vietnam. Karlin has received five State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994 and 2004), the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999 for Prisoners, the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in Arts Award in 2005, and the Juniper Prize for Fiction for 2019 for A Wolf by the Ears.