Biography: [as posted on Caitlin's official site]
 

Caitlín R. Kiernan (the R. stands for Rebekah) was born in Skerries, Ireland, north of Dublin, but was moved to the States as a small child, following the death of her birth-father. She grew up in places like Thibodaux, Louisiana and Jacksonville, Florida, before her mother settled in a small town near Birmingham, Alabama. Despite the country of her birth, Caitlín has often stressed her Southernness and its importance to her fiction and has rarely written about Ireland.

Caitlín left Birmingham briefly in the mid-eighties, attending the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she studied vertebrate paleontology. Back in Birmingham, she held the position of Associate Paleontologist at the now-defunct Red Mountain Museum. In 1988, she described and named Selmasaurus russelli, a new type of mosasaur from Alabama (mosasaurs were giant marine lizards that thrived near the end of the Mesozoic Era and became extinct along with the dinosaurs). Although writing consumes most of her time these days, Caitlín is still active in paleontology, and her research has been published in the Journal of Paleontology, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, among others.

Caitlín has been interested in writing dark fiction since childhood. She grew up reading fantasists like Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bram Stoker, Richard Adams, and Stephen R. Donaldson. But it wasn't until college, when she discovered the Modernists, especially the works of James Joyce, that she became seriously interested in writing. The Modernists, along with the late Victorians and the Romantics, continue to serve as an important influence on her work.

She sold her first short story in July 1993, a dystopian science-fiction tale called "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea" to the anthology High Fantastic (Ocean View Press, 1995); however, her first story to be published was another sf piece, "Persephone," which originally appeared in the small press magazine, Aberrations (March 1995). Caitlín soon turned away from science fiction, focusing instead on contemporary settings and characters, and by the summer of 1994 had already developed her now-trademark "gothnoir" approach to dark fiction (she eschews the label "horror," but not, she says, ". . . because labels are inherently a bad thing, but because 'horror' is an inadequate, and often inappropriate, label to describe my work."). By 1996, Caitlín's stories were appearing in such high-profile anthologies as Love in Vein II and The Sandman: Book of Dreams.

In February of that same year, she finished her novel Silk, which would be published in 1998 by Roc (Dutton-Signet). Greeted with praise from both reviewers and her peers, Silk recieved the International Horror Guild and Barnes and Noble Maiden Voyage awards in the category of best first novel, and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards in the same category. In 1999, Gauntlet Publications released a limited-edition hardback of Silk, photo-illustrated by Clive Barker.

Also in 1996, Caitlín was invited by Neil Gaiman to write for DC Vertigo's The Dreaming, the follow-up to Gaiman's wildly successful and award-winning series, The Sandman. Her first three-issue story, "Souvenirs," was released in the summer of 1997, and only a year later Caitlín would become the regular author for the ongoing series. She also scripted the popular Vertigo mini-series, The Girl Who Would Be Death, which was published in 1998.

From July 1996 to February 1997, Caitlín fronted the Athens, GA goth band, Death's Little Sister, playing shows in Athens and Atlanta. She left the group when the band's frantic schedule began to affect her writing.

Meanwhile, her short fiction continued to gain in popularity, appearing in anthologies such as Dark Terrors 2,3, 5, and 6, Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium, and Silver Birch, Blood Moon. In 1997, her story "Estate" was chosen by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and her story "Emptiness Spoke Eloquent" was selected by Stephen Jones for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: Volume Nine. Subsequently, her stories "Postcards from the King of Tides," "The Long Hall on the Top Floor," and "In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)" have been selected for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volumes 10-12, respectively, and her story "Onion" was selected for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Volume 15.

In May 1998, Meisha Merlin Press released Candles for Elizabeth, a chapbook consisting of three of Caitlín's stories, and including an afterword by Poppy Z. Brite. This was followed in March 2000 by the release of her first collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder, including an introduction by Douglas E. Winter and afterword by Peter Straub, from Gauntlet Publications; a second collection, From Weird and Distant Shores, was released in January 2002 by Subterranean Press. To date, her work has been translated into German, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Czech. Caitlín's second novel, Threshold, was released in November 2001 and won the International Horror Guild Award for best novel of the year. She also received the 2001 IHG award for best short story, for "Onion" (from Wrong Things).

Infamous for her hatred of deconstructionists and abstract expressionism, she currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her cat Sophie, several thousand fossils and two dubious-looking house plants; a self-described recluse, she rarely ventures farther than her mailbox.