Kirsten Bakis

American novelist

Kirsten Bakis
Born	1968 (age 55–56) Switzerland
Occupation	Novelist
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	New York University
Notable awards	BSA–First Novel (1997) Whiting Award–Fiction (2004)

Kirsten Bakis (born 1968, Switzerland^[1]) is an American novelist.^[2]

Early life and education

Bakis was raised in Westchester County, New York, and graduated from New York University in 1990. She is a recipient of a Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a grant from the Michener/Copernicus Society of America.

Career

She has taught at Hampshire College and was a writer-in-residence at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York in 2005.

She published her first novel, Lives of the Monster Dogs, in 1997.^[3] The novel was reissued twenty years later in 2017.^[3]^[4]

Bakis wrote a novel in 2004 out of financial need, though it was not published under her name.^[5]

Lives of the Monster Dogs received mostly positive reviews. Critics praised it for its originality, while also noting some of its drawbacks as science fiction.^[6] Following the 2017 reissue, Jeff VanderMeer of The Atlantic writes, "20 years later, as it gets a much-deserved reissue, Lives of the Monster Dogs feels undeniably like a classic."^[3] Tobias Carroll of Tor.com writes in 2017, "The novel opens with a nearly perfect first line: "In the years since the monster dogs were here with us, in New York, I’ve often been asked to write something about the time I spent with them.""^[7] Sharona Lin of Guernica writes in 2020, "It’s a wild and fantastical tale with all the hallmarks of a gothic classic: there’s a mad Prussian scientist, a secretive village, an existential crisis, a pondering of what it truly means to be human."^[4]

Bakis' second novel King Nyx was released in early 2024 to mixed review. The New York Times wrote, "Bakis summons her gift for atmospheric prose in a few memorable scenes, but otherwise 'King Nyx' feels flat."^[8] Published 27 years after her first novel, one commenter wrote that King Nyx felt semi-autobiographical of Bakis' life experiences due to the many similarities between her and the novel's main character Anna. In this interview, Bakis noted that the popular reception of Lives of Monster Dogs was overwhelming, and contributed to the long hiatus between book releases.^[5]

Personal life

Bakis has lived with her two children, Theo and Charlotte, in Croton-on-Hudson since 2010.^[5]

Awards and honors

Honors

Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop
New York Times Notable Book for the year, for Lives of the Monster Dogs^[3]

Literary

Year	Title	Award	Category	Result	Ref
1997	Lives of the Monster Dogs	Bram Stoker Award	First Novel	Won	^[3]
1998	Lives of the Monster Dogs	Orange Prize for Fiction	—	Shortlisted	^[3]
2004	—	Whiting Award	Fiction	Won

Works

Novels

—— (1997). Lives of the Monster Dogs. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 9780446674164.
—— (2024). King Nyx. Liveright. ISBN 9781324093534.

Short fiction

"The Thief". Tin House (65). Fall 2015.

References

^ "SFE: Bakis, Kirsten". sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
^ Burt, Daniel S., ed. (c. 2004). The Chronology of American Literature. Houghton Mifflin. p. 716. ISBN 0-618-16821-4. Retrieved May 16, 2010.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Vandermeer, Jeff (May 9, 2017). "When Talking Canines Took Over New York". The Atlantic. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
^ ^a ^b Lin, Sharona (March 11, 2020). "Ruff Reckoning". Guernica. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Her debut was unforgettable — 27 years later, she's finally back". Washington Post. 2024-02-16. Retrieved 2024-03-11.
^ "Kirsten Bakis." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 June 2014.
^ Carroll, Tobias (May 15, 2017). "The Monstrous and the Tragic: Kirsten Bakis's Lives of the Monster Dogs". Tor.com. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
^ Hand, Elizabeth (2024-02-27). "Kirsten Bakis's Long-Awaited Second Novel Is a Busy Gothic Noir". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-11.