Photo: Kyle Cassidy

Born in Dublin,
Ireland, and raised in the southeastern U.S., writer, vertebrate
paleontologist, and musician Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of
thirteen acclaimed novels including Silk (1998; winner of
International Horror Guild Award), Threshold (2001;
International Horror Guild), Murder of Angels (2004), The
Red Tree (2009), The Drowning Girl (2012; Tiptree and
Stoker), the Siobhan Quinn series (all as by Kathleen Tierney; Blood
Oranges [2013], Red Delicious [2014], and Cherry Bomb
[2015]), Agents of Dreamland (2017), and Black Helicopters
(2018). Her more than two hundred and fifty short stories have been
collected in Candles for Elizabeth (1998), Tales of
Pain and Wonder (1999), Wrong Things (2001 with Poppy Z.
Brite), To Charles Fort, with Love (2005), A Is for Alien
(2009), Two Worlds and In Between (2011), Confessions of a
Five-Chambered Heart (2012), The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories
(2013; winner of the World Fantasy Award), Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea
(2015), Dear Sweet Filthy World (2017), The Dinosaur
Tourist (2018), and THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN (2019).

Kiernan has written
graphic novels for both DC/Vertigo and Dark Horse Comics including
The Dreaming (1996-2001 with various artists), a spin off
series from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman,  and the Stoker Award
winning Alabaster: Wolves (2013; with artist Steve Lieber).
She fronted Death’s Little Sister, a short-lived goth-rock band. As a
vertebrate paleontologist in 1988, she
described a new genus and species of an ancient marine lizard, the
mosasaur Selmasaurus russelli.

In November 2005,
she began publishing the Sirenia Digest, “a monthly
subscription-only e-zine continuing Caitlín’s exploration of the
fusion of erotic literature with elements of dark fantasy and science
fiction, usually creating brief, dreamlike vignettes, and sometimes
much longer short stories.” There are currently sixty-six issues
and more than eighty vignettes.

Kiernan lives in
Birmingham, Alabama with her partner, Kathryn Pollnac, and two very
large cats, Selwyn and Lydia.

All of us at Tachyon
wish the lyrical and memorable Caitlín a happy birthday full of dark
fantasy and dinosaurs.

For more info about THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Hannes Hummel
Design by Elizabeth Story