Happy birthday to the exceptional Caitlín R. Kiernan
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]), Tinfoil Dossier (Agents of Dreamland [2017], Black Helicopters [2018], The Tindalos Asset [2020]), and La Belle Fleur Sauvage: Plague of the Womb (2019).
Their 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), Houses Under the Sea (2019), A Little Yellow Book of Fever Dreams (2019), THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN (2019), Comes a Pale Rider (2020), and several others.
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). They fronted Death’s Little Sister, a short-lived goth-rock band.
Design by Elizabeth Story
A vertebrate paleontologist, Kiernan co-founded the Birmingham Paleontological Society (1984). They co-authored papers describing a new genus and species of an ancient marine lizard the mosasaur Selmasaurus russelli (1988) and in 2020, a new large fossil sea turtle, Asmodochelys parhami. In 2019, Kiernan became a research associate and fossil preparator at McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
In November 2005, they 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 their 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.