Caitlin R. Kiernan

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Caitlín R. Kiernan (2011)

Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan (born May 26, 1964 in Skerries , County Fingal , Ireland ) is an American writer of science fiction , dark fantasy and comics and a paleontologist .

Life

Kiernan was born in Skerries, a small coastal town north of Dublin in 1964 . After the death of her father, the mother returned to the United States and Kiernan grew up in various parts of the southern states, including Thibodaux , Louisiana and Jacksonville , Florida . Eventually the family settled in Leeds , near Birmingham, in rural Alabama , where their mother and sister still live. From 1980 the family moved to Trussville , where they attended high school until 1982 . Kiernan then studied vertebrate paleontology, geology and biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and at the University of Colorado at Boulder . She taught evolutionary biology in Birmingham for about a year , worked there at the Red Mountain Museum and published several scientific papers on paleontology. In 1988 she named and described Selmasaurus russelli , a new species of mosasaur . In 1992 she gave up her academic career in order to devote herself to writing and worked alongside as a striptease dancer.

Kiernan's first published story was Persephone , which appeared in Aberrations magazine in March 1995 and was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Awards . Since then, Kiernan has published over 250 short stories and vignettes, of which The Prayer of Ninety Cats received the World Fantasy Award and The Road of Needles the Locus Award in 2014. Her stories have been collected in 18 selected volumes, of which The Ape's Wife and Other Stories won the World Fantasy Award in 2014.

In August 1995, Kiernan's lover died of suicide. She was then 24 years old and had just graduated from college in sociology . Kiernan only found out about it a few days later. This event was not only drastic personally, but also from then on an essential element of Kiernan's literary work. The loss of a partner through suicide is often the theme or background of their characters. A first story with direct reference to the death of her partner appeared in 1996, and in the years that followed Kiernan, by his own admission, basically wrote about little else. Kiernan sees her books as a reflection of her biography, which in addition to the suicide of the lover also includes a drunkard stepfather, discrimination, transsexuality and corresponding adaptation , physical and psychological abuse, drug addiction and, in addition, “life in the south as such and eight years of college” .

In 1996/1997 Kiernan was the singer of Death's Little Sister , a Goth - Folk - Blues group from Athens , Georgia , but gave up music to devote himself entirely to writing. She has been a freelance writer ever since.

Kiernan's first novel was the vampire story The Five of Cups , which turned out to be an unfortunate choice of subject as the vampire novels market was inundated when she wrote it in the early 1990s. She sent an excerpt to several of her esteemed authors and in this way found contact with a literary agent who was interested, but not in a vampire novel. This led her to write Silk , a horror novel set in the Goth scene in 1998 - according to Kiernan, "half William Faulkner and half HP Lovecraft ." The main character, Spyder Baxter, is a young woman who lives in a small town in the Southern states runs a second-hand shop. She was abused by her father as a child and her nightmares are now beginning to materialize and spread to her surroundings. In 1999, Silk received the International Horror Guild Award for best debut novel . Spyder Baxter and other characters from Silk also appear in the novel Murder of Angels (2004). The Five of Cups was not released until 2003 after a limited edition planned for 1996 never appeared.

Caitlín R. Kiernan (2001)

Kiernan's other novels are Threshold (2001, German as Fossil ), which won the International Horror Guild Award for best novel in 2002, Low Red Moon (2003, German as creature ), the short story Alabaster and the novel Daughter of Hounds (2007). These novels and a number of short stories are loosely linked by their protagonists and shared locations. The main characters include the paleontologist - this is where Kiernan brings her academic background into play - Chance Matthews in Threshold , married to Deacon Silvey in Low Red Moon and their daughter Emmie Silvey in Daughter of Hounds . Then there is Dancy Flammarion, a strange teenager with alabaster skin who, at the behest of an angel, roams a dark version of the southern states in search of monsters, which she then kills. Or maybe the angel arises from the imaginations of her tormented soul.

1997 Kiernan wrote at the invitation of Neil Gaiman a three-part story for The Dreaming , one of Gaiman's Sandman - universe out emerged comic series, which in 1996 DC Vertigo appeared. Her story Souvenirs was published as Volume 17 to 19 and was well received, which is why Kiernan subsequently largely took over writing the scripts for the series until it was discontinued with Volume 60. In the following years she wrote scripts for two other short series for DC ( The Girl Who Would Be Death and Bast ) and from 2012 the Alabaster series with Dancy Flammarion, the protagonist of her Threshold novel series, for the comic book publisher Dark Horse .

Kiernan's most successful book to date was The Drowning Girl (2012), which won the Bram Stoker Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award . The novel revolves around the encounter between the schizophrenic and therefore unreliable narrator India Morgan Phelps called "Imp" and a mysterious woman called Eva Canning, the only survivor of a cult whose members had drowned in the sea a few years earlier. Or maybe Eva is not a survivor, but the materialized spirit of a drowned person - or a kind of sea spirit in human form. All of this remains unclear, as the narrator increasingly loses contact with the world and reality and can no longer be sure of the reality of her experiences.

The Drowning Girl is set in Providence , Rhode Island , home of the Kiernan revered HP Lovecraft, where she moved in 2008. In 2018 she moved back to Birmingham, Alabama. Kiernan lives with her partner, the photographer and doll maker Kathryn A. Pollnac ("Spooky").

Kiernan's manuscripts, personal records, and other records have been in the holdings of the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence since 2017 .

Awards

  • 1999: International Horror Guild Award for the debut novel Silk
  • 2002: International Horror Guild Award for the novel Threshold and for the short story Onion
  • 2006: International Horror Guild Award for La Peau Verte (Mid-length Fiction)
  • 2012: Bram Stoker Award for the novel The Drowning Girl
  • 2012: James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award for the novel The Drowning Girl
  • 2014: World Fantasy Award for the short story The Prayer of Ninety Cats and for the collection The Ape's Wife and Other Stories
  • 2014: Bram Stoker Award for the Alabaster: Wolves (Graphic Novel)
  • 2014: Locus Award for the short story The Road of Needles

bibliography

Series

The series are arranged according to the year of publication of the first part.

Salmagundi Desvernine (short stories)
  • Breakfast in the House of the Rising Sun (1997)
  • Salmagundi (1998)
  • Glass Coffin (1999)
  • ... Between the Gargoyle Trees (2000)
Spyder Baxter
  • 1 Silk (1998)
  • 2 Murder of Angels (2004)
Dandridge Cycle (short stories)
  • A Redress for Andromeda (2000)
  • Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea (2002)
  • Andromeda Among the Stones (2003)
Threshold / Dancy Flammarion

Novels:

  • Threshold (2001)
  • Low Red Moon (2003)
  • Daughter of Hounds (2007)

Collections:

  • Alabaster (2006)
  • Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold (2003)

Short stories:

  • In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888) (2000)
  • In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers (2002)
  • Waycross (2003)
  • Dane (2003)
  • Original Unused Prologue to Threshold (2003)
  • Second Unused Prologue to Threshold (2003)
  • The Well of Stars and Shadow (2003)
  • Alabaster (2006)
  • Bainbridge (2006)
  • Les Fleurs Empoisonnées (2006)
  • Highway 97 (2014)
  • Dancy vs. the Pterosaur (2015)
Siobhan Quinn (as Kathleen Tierney)
  • 1 Blood Oranges (2013)
  • 2 Red Delicious (2014)
  • 3 Cherry Bomb (2015)

Novels

  • The Five of Cups (2003)
  • Beowulf (2007, novel version of The Legend of Beowulf )
  • The Red Tree (2009)
  • The Drowning Girl (2012)
  • Black Helicopters (2013, extended version 2018)
  • Agents of Dreamland (2017)

Collections

  • Candles for Elizabeth (1998)
  • Tales of Pain and Wonder (1999)
  • Wrong Things (2001, with Poppy Z. Brite )
  • From Weird and Distant Shores (2002)
  • Frog Toes and Tentacles (2005)
  • To Charles Fort, with Love (2005)
  • Tales from the Woeful Platypus (2007)
  • A Is for Alien (2009)
  • The Ammonite Violin & Others (2010)
  • Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (2012)
  • The Yellow Book (2012)
  • The Ape's Wife and Other Stories (2013)
  • Dear Sweet Filthy World (2017)
  • The Dinosaur Tourist (2018)
The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan
  • Two Worlds and In Between (2011)
  • Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea (2015)

Short stories

  • Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea (1995)
  • Hoar Isis (1995)
  • The Comedy of St. Jehanne d'Arc (1995)
  • Persephone (1995)
  • Anamorphosis (1996)
  • Escape Artist (1996)
  • Giants in the Earth (1996)
  • Stoker's Mistress (1996)
  • Tears Seven Times Salt (1996)
  • To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889) (1996)
    • English: At this water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1889). In: Stephen Jones, David A. Sutton (Eds.): Darker Terrors. Festa, 2017.
  • A Story for Edward Gorey (1997)
  • Bela's Plot (1997)
  • Emptiness Spoke Eloquent (1997)
  • Estate (1997)
  • Two Worlds, and in Between (1997)
  • The Last Child of Lir (1997)
  • Superheroes (1997)
  • Found Angels (1998, with Christa Faust)
  • Postcards from the King of Tides (1998)
  • Paedomorphosis (1998)
  • The King of Birds (1998)
  • Rats Live on No Evil Star (1999)
  • Salammbo (1999)
  • The Long Hall on the Top Floor (1999)
  • Angels You Can See Through (2000)
  • Lafayette (2000)
  • San Andreas (2000)
  • Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956) (2000)
  • Valentia (2000)
  • By Turns (2000)
  • So Runs the World Away (2001)
  • Onion (2001)
  • The Rest of the Wrong Thing (2001, with Poppy Z. Brite)
  • The Road of Pins (2002)
  • Apocatastasis (2002)
  • Night Story 1973 (2002, with Poppy Z. Brite)
  • Standing Water (2002)
  • Mercury (2003)
  • Threshold (Excerpt from Original Chapter 1) (2003)
  • The Drowned Geologist (2003)
  • The Dead and the Moonstruck (2004)
  • Riding the White Bull (2004)
  • La Mer Des Rêves (2004)
  • The Dry Salvages (2004)
  • Bradbury Weather (2005)
  • Faces in Revolving Souls (2005)
  • Flicker (2005)
  • From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6 (2005)
  • La Peau Verte (2005)
  • Los Angeles, 2162 (December) (2005)
  • Ode to Katan Amano (2005)
  • Pages Found Among the Effects of Miss Edith Teller (2005)
  • Pump Excursion (2005)
  • The Worm in My Mind's Eye (2005)
  • Untitled 11 (2005)
  • Untitled 12 (2005)
  • Untitled 4 (2005)
  • Untitled 7 (2005)
  • Houses Under the Sea (2006)
  • Madonna Littoralis (2006)
  • Orpheus at Mount Pangaeum (2006)
  • The Pearl Diver (2006)
  • Bridle (2006)
  • For One Who Has Lost Herself (2006)
  • Ode to Edvard Munch (2006)
  • The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3) (2006)
  • A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills (2006)
  • The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4) (2006)
  • Metamorphosis A (2006)
  • The Lovesong of Lady Ratteanrufer (2006)
  • Metamorphosis B (2006)
  • The Voyeur in the House of Glass (2006)
  • Daughter of Hounds (excerpt) (2007)
  • Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm (2007)
  • Forests of the Night (2007)
  • Notes from a Damned Life (2007)
  • pas-en-arrière (2007)
  • Pony (2007)
  • Still Life (2007)
  • The Ape's Wife (2007)
  • The Garden of Living Flowers (2007)
  • The Sphinx's Kiss (2007)
  • Untitled 17 (2007)
  • Untitled 20 (2007)
  • Zero Summer (2007)
  • Skin Game (2007)
  • In View of Nothing (2007)
  • The Hole with a Girl in Its Heart (2007)
  • A Season of Broken Dolls (2007)
  • Outside the Gates of Eden (2007)
  • Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert (2007)
  • In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection (2007)
  • Scene in the Museum (1896) (2007)
  • Untitled Grotesque (2007)
  • The Bed of Appetite (2007)
  • The Madam of the Narrow Houses (2007)
  • The Wolf Who Cried Girl (2007)
  • The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles (2007)
  • The Collector of Bones (2008)
  • Beatification (2008)
  • Pickman's Other Model (1929) (2008)
  • Salammbô Redux (2007) (2008)
  • Flotsam (2008)
  • Regarding Attrition and Severance (2008)
  • Rappaccini's Dragon (Murder Ballad No. 5) (2008)
  • Under the eyes of the moon (2008)
  • Derma Sutra (1891) (2008)
  • The Steam Dancer (1896) (2008)
  • I Am the Abyss and I Am the Light (2008)
  • Dancing with the Eight of Swords (2008)
  • Lullaby of Partition and Reunion (2008)
  • Murder Ballad No. 7 (2008)
  • The Belated Burial (2009)
  • The Thousand-and-Third Tale of Scheherazade (2009)
  • The Bone's Prayer (2009)
  • A Canvas for Incoherent Arts (2009)
  • At the Gate of Deeper Slumber (2009)
  • The Peril of Liberated Objects, or the Voyeur's Seduction (2009)
  • Fish Bride (2009)
  • Vicaria Draconis (2009)
  • Paleozoic Annunciation (2009)
  • Werewolf Smile (2009)
  • Charcloth, Firesteel, and Flint (2009)
  • Shipwrecks Above (2009)
  • Galápagos (2009)
  • The Dissevered Hearts (2009)
  • Exuvium (2009)
  • Last Drink Bird Head (2009)
  • Drawing from Life (2009)
  • The Eighth Veil (2010)
  • Three Months, Three Scenes, with Snow (2010)
  • Workprint (2010)
  • Tempest Witch (2010)
  • Sanderlings (2010)
  • The Sea Troll's Daughter (2010)
  • The Yellow Alphabet (2010)
  • Fairy Tale of the Maritime (2010)
  • As Red as Red (2010)
  • And the Cloud That Took the Form (2010)
  • —30— (2010)
  • A Key to the Castleblakeney Key (2011)
  • The Crimson Alphabet (Another Primer) (2011)
  • The Melusine (1898) (2011)
  • The Carnival Is Dead and Gone (2011)
  • Hydraguros (2011)
  • Figurehead (2011)
  • Scylla for Dummies (2011)
  • Tidal Forces (2011)
  • Down to Gehenna (2011)
  • The Maltese Unicorn (2011)
  • The Colliers' Venus (1893) (2011)
  • The Granting Cabinet (2011)
  • Evensong (2011)
  • Slouching Towards the House of Glass Coffins (2011)
  • Daughter Dear Desmodus (2011)
  • On the Reef (2011)
  • Latitude 41 ° 21'45.89 "N, Longitude 71 ° 29'0.62" W (2011)
  • Another Tale of Two Cities (2011)
  • Blast the Human Flower (2011)
  • Cammufare (2012)
  • Here Is No Why (2012)
  • Cover plate / counter plate (2012)
  • Fecunditatum (Murder Ballad No. 6) (2012)
  • Love Is Forbidden, We Croak and Howl (2012)
  • Subterraneus (2012)
  • Random Thoughts Before a Fatal Crash (2012, also as Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash )
  • Houndwife (2012)
  • Tall Bodies (2012)
  • Ex Libris (2012)
  • Our Lady of Arsia Mons (2012)
  • Goggles (c.1910) (2012)
  • Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still (2012)
  • Fake Plastic Trees (2012)
  • The Prayer of Ninety Cats (2013)
  • Elegy for a Suicide (2013)
  • The Road of Needles (2013)
  • The Transition of Elizabeth Haskings (2013)
  • One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm) (2013)
  • The Peddler's Tale, or, Isobel's Revenge (2013)
  • Blind Fish (2014)
  • John Four (2014)
  • Bus Fare (2014)
  • The Beginning of the Year Without a Summer (2014)
  • Ballad of an Echo Whisperer (2014)
  • Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8) (2014)
  • The Jetsam of Disremembered Mechanics (2014)
  • Far from Any Shore (2014)
  • The Cats of River Street (1925) (2014)
  • Pushing the Sky Away (Death of a Blasphemer) (2014)
  • A Mountain Walked (2014)
  • The Cripple and the Starfish (2015)
  • Black Ships Seen South of Heaven (2015)
  • The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean (2015)
  • Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9) (2016)
  • Excerpts for An Eschatology Quadrille (2016, also as Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille )
  • Animals Pull the Night Around Their Shoulders (2016)
  • Antediluvian Homesick Blues (2016)
  • The Line Between the Devil's Teeth (Murder Ballad No. 10) (2016)
  • Untitled Psychiatrist No. 2 (2017)
  • Ballad of a Catamite Revolver (2017)
  • Dead Letter Office (2017)
  • Untitled Psychiatrist No. 3 (2017)
  • Fairy Tale of Wood Street (2017)
  • The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11) (2017)
  • Albatross (1994) (2017)
  • Objects in the Mirror (2017)

comics

  • The Girl Who Would Be Death (4 volumes, 1998–1999)
  • Bast: Eternity Game (3 volumes, 2002)
The Dreaming (1997-2001)
  • # 17—19 Souvenirs (1997)
  • # 22—24 An Unkindness of One (1998)
  • # 26 restitution (1998)
  • # 27 Stormy Weather (1998)
  • # 28 Dreams the Burning Dream (1998)
  • # 30 Temporary Overflow (1998)
  • # 31 November Eve (1998)
  • # 33 Dream Below (1999)
  • # 34 ruin (1999)
  • # 35 Kaleidoscope (1999)
  • # 36 Slow Dying (1999)
  • # 37 Pariah (1999)
  • # 38 Apostates (1999)
  • # 39 The Lost Language of Flowers (1999)
  • # 40 New Orleans for Free (1999)
  • # 41 The Bittersweet Scent of Opium (1999)
  • # 42 Detonation Boulevard (1999)
  • # 43 The Two Trees (1999)
  • # 44 Homesick (2000)
  • # 45 Masques & Hedgehogs (2000)
  • # 46 Mirror, Mirror (2000)
  • # 47 trinket (2000)
  • # 48 Scary Monsters (2000)
  • # 49 Shatter (2000)
  • # 50 restoration (2000)
  • # 51 Second Sight (2000)
  • # 52—54 Exiles (2000)
  • # 56 The First Adventure of Miss Catterina Poe (2001)
  • # 57-60 Rise (2001)

in Vertigo: Winter's Edge # 1–3:

  • The Dreaming: Deck the Halls (1998, with Peter Hogan)
  • The Dreaming: Marble Halls (1999)
  • The Dreaming: Borealis (2000)
Alabaster (2012-2016)
  • Alabaster: Wolves (5 volumes, 2012, hardcover in one volume 2013)
  • Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (in Dark Horse Presents , 2012–2013, hardcover as Alabaster: Grimmer Tales , 2014)
  • Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird (5 volumes, 2015–2016)

literature

Interviews

More interviews on Caitlín R. Kiernan's website .

Web links

Commons : Caitlin Kiernan  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Caitlín R. Kiernan  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Caitlín R. Kiernan - Biography ( Memento of February 3, 2001 in the Internet Archive ).
  2. ↑ greygirlbeast , entry July 21, 2018, accessed December 12, 2018.
  3. ↑ gray girl beast - Trussville , accessed on 12 December 2018th
  4. ↑ Selmasaurus russelli , accessed December 24, 2018.
  5. ↑ toilet Stroby: The Art of Networking: Caitlin R. Kiernan and "The Five of Cups." ( Memento of January 31, 1998 in the Internet Archive ) In: Writer's Digest (March 1996).
  6. ^ Bram Stoker Awards 1995
  7. ↑ Elizabeth "Liz" Tillman Aldridge (December 30, 1930 - August 3, 1995). See entries under Greygirlbeast - Elizabeth , accessed December 22, 2018.
  8. ^ Giants in the Earth. In: Edward E. Kramer (Ed.): Michael Moorcock's Pawn of Chaos: Tales of the Eternal Champion. White Wolf Publishing, 1996, ISBN 1-56504-933-0 .
  9. ^ "A couple of days later, I wrote" Giants in the Earth, "the first story that I wrote about Elizabeth's death. In the years ahead of me, I wrote about little else (and I did little but write, as work seemed the only vital thing I had left). Occassionally, someone would ask me who she was. After all, all my novels have been in memory of her, and there was Candles for Elizabeth , the little chapbook I did in 1998. Threshold was more about Elizabeth's death and my struggle to deal with it than it was about anything else. Ditto for Tales of Pain and Wonder . "See greygirlbeast - nine years (August 3, 2004), accessed December 22, 2018.
  10. ^ "I think my writing is a fairly accurate reflection of who I am, what I've lived through, of who I want to be. I've survived things that I shouldn't have, that no one should have to survive: divorces, a lover's suicide, discrimination so pernicious and inescapable that it entirely altered the course of my life, gender dysphoria and gender reassignment, an alcoholic stepfather , physical and psychological abuse, drug addiction, life in the South, and eight years of college. "Geoffrey H. Goodwin: An Interview with Caitlin R. Kiernan. In: Bookslut (November 2004), accessed December 22, 2018.
  11. ↑ caitlinrkiernan.com - Music , accessed December 12, 2018.
  12. ↑ a b c Interview by Thom Carnell in Carpe Noctem (July 1997, published 1998), accessed on December 22, 2018.
  13. ↑ Caitlín R. Kiernan: Who is Dancy Flammarion (Alabaster)? , Posted March 27, 2012 on DarkHorse.com, accessed December 24, 2014.
  14. ↑ Caitlin R. Kiernan: Transmutations. In: Locus # 575 (December 2008, excerpts , accessed December 12, 2018).
  15. ↑ Brown University Library News , August 11, 2017, accessed December 12, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Kiernan, Caitlín R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kiernan, Caitlín Rebekah (full name); Tierney, Kathleen (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-American writer of science fiction, dark fantasy and comics and a paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Skerries , County Fingal , Ireland