Impossible Princess

“Kevin Killian is the greatest unsung genius in contemporary American literature.“—Dennis Cooper, author of Everyman: Stories and Closer: A Novel

“Kevin Killian’s Impossible Princess is impossibly captivating, each short story a bed of sticky pollen. It’s an endless inspiration to writers and readers alike.“—Susie Bright, editor of Best American Erotica

“Kevin Killian’s stellar body of work defies categorization. His novels, stories, and poems have been around for over two decades, occupying sacred spaces on the bookshelves of idolators like me and many others. The pieces in Impossible Princess—some of them written with various splendid collaborators—are hilarious, sad, scary, intimate, weird, complex, really dirty, and most of all, first-rate. Each story’s a little outburst of brilliance. I love this book.“—Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear

“Kevin Killian has long been considered one of the finest, if unheralded, writers of experimental gay fiction.“—Amazon.com

A founder and former director of Small Press Traffic, Kevin Killian was a hidden favorite of gay literary San Francisco. He was the author of many books including the PEN award-winning Little Men(1996), I Cry Like a Baby (2001), Shy (1989), Arctic Summer (1997), Spread Eagle (2010), Bedrooms Have Windows (1989)and Action Kylie (2008), a collection of poems inspired by Kylie Minogue. He co-wrote the Jack Spicer biography, Poet Be Like God (1998) and co-edited several volumes of Spicer’s work, includingMy Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008). With his wife Dodie Bellamy, he edited the long-running poetry zineMirage/Periodical. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in, among others,Best American Poetry1988 (ed. John Ashbery), and Discontents (ed. Dennis Cooper). Impossible Princesswon the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Erotic Fiction. Kevin Killian died on June 15th, 2019.