Kevin Killian (December 24, 1952 – June 15, 2019) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

, editor, and playwright primarily of

LGBT literature LGBT literature may refer to: * Lesbian literature * Gay literature * Bisexual literature * Transgender literature Transgender literature is a collective term used to designate the literary production that addresses, has been written by or portra ...

. ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with

Peter Gizzi Peter Gizzi (born 1959 in Alma, Michigan) is an American poet, essayist, editor and teacher. He attended New York University, Brown University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. Life Gizzi was born in Alma, Michigan to an Italia ...

, won the

American Book Award The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...

for poetry in 2009. Killian was also co-founder of the Poets Theater, an influential poetry, stage, and performance group based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

as well as the New Narrative movement in San Francisco.Pohl, R.D. "Poets Theater at Burchfield Penney Art Center." ''Buffalo News.'' April 2, 2009.

Life and career

Kevin Killian was born on December 24, 1952, in Smithtown, New York. He was raised

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

and attended a Roman Catholic parochial school run by

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

friars. He discussed these experiences in an essay in the edited work ''Wrestling with the Angel''. He was also the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

spelling bee champion. He attended Fordham University and graduate school at Stony Brook University in the 1970s. Killian moved to San Francisco in 1980. A year later in 1981, he met fellow author Dodie Bellamy, both are bisexual. The couple were married for 34 years. Killian admired the work of JT LeRoy (later to be revealed as the pen name and

persona A persona (plural personae or personas), depending on the context, is the public image of one's personality, the social role that one adopts, or simply a fictional character. The word derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatr ...

of author Laura Albert), and held public readings of LeRoy's work in 2000. As a beginning novelist, Killian tied for first place in the "Hamming Up Hammett"

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' ...

bad-writing contest in

in 1988. Author Dodie Bellamy featured him as a partially fictional character in her

vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deat ...

novel ''The Letters of Mina Harker''. His poetry has appeared in the anthology ''

The Best American Poetry ''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems. Background The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general ...

1988'', the magazine ''Discontents'', and the anthology ''Good Times: Bad Trips''. Killian once based a volume of poetry on the work of horror film director Dario Argento (motivated to do so as a response to the AIDS epidemic). Killian also helped author Alvin Orloff polish chapters of his novel ''Gutterboys''. Noted author

Edmund White Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordr ...

described his work as "a kind of mandarin American casualness that is peculiar to … West Coast writers … a school of refined but deceptively offhand stylists." ''The Village Voice'' called ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, "impeccably edited"."The Best Books of 2008." ''The Village Voice.'' December 10, 2008. The work was also highly praised by ''The New York Times.'' Killian's 2009 collection of short gay erotic fiction ''Impossible Princess'' won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for best gay men's erotica. The first story in the collection, "Young Hank Williams," was written with Canadian cult writer Derek McCormack. The collection was inspired by Kylie Minogue's album of the same name and, in turn, it inspired Conrad Tao's piano composition "All I Had Forgotten Or Tried To". Killian was founder and former director of Small Press Traffic. He also edited the

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

'zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

''Mirage''. Killian died from cancer on June 15, 2019.

Poets Theater and retrospective work

Killian's interest in theatre emerged in the early 1980s when he saw experimental plays by

Carla Harryman Carla Harryman (born January 11, 1952) is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of t ...

.Cook, David. "The Poets Theater Jubilee Brings Verse to the Stage." ''SF Weekly.'' January 23, 2002. Harryman and Tom Mandel subsequently cast him in their play ''Fist of the Colossus''.Sullivan, Gary. "Kevin Killian: Interview." ''readme.'' Spring/Summer 2001.
Accessed 2010-05-29. He co-founded the Poets Theater in San Francisco, and acted in as well as wrote pieces for the group. As of 2001, he had written 31 plays. He co-authored the

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

piece ''The Red and the Green'' in 2005 with cinematographer Karla Milosevich. In 2009, Killian and David Brazil co-edited a collection of Poets Theater pieces, ''The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theatre: 1945–1985.'' Killian was also active in bringing attention to important LGBTQ artists and writers of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He held poetry readings of a wide number of influential poets and writers and participated in a number of panels, art installations, retrospectives, and memorials. For example, in 2008 he was a featured speaker at a

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classifie ...

"Poetry of the 1970s" conference. He and artist Colter Jacobsen also helped organize a tribute ("Kiki: The Proof Is in the Pudding") to the Kiki Gallery, an influential art gallery in San Francisco in the 1980s that featured the work of LGBTQ artists.Vogel, Tracy. "The Anger and the Ecstasy of Kiki Revisited." ''SF Weekly.'' July 9, 2008.

Published works

Story and poetry collections

* * * * * * *

Novels

* * * *

Biographies

*''Poet Be Like God'' (co-written with Lewis Ellingham;

Wesleyan University Press Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist. History and overview Founded (in its present form ...

, 1998)

Edited works

*''The Wild Creatures'' by

Sam D'Allesandro Sam D’Allesandro (born Richard Anderson) (April 3, 1956 – February 3, 1988) was an American writer and poet. He studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and came to San Francisco as a young man in the early 1980s and published a ...

(Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005) *''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' (co-edited with Peter Gizzi; Wesleyan University Press, 2008) *''The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater: 1945-1985'' (co-edited with David Brazil; Kenning Editions, 2010) *''Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977-1997'' (co-edited with Dodie Bellamy; Nightboat Books, 2017)

Plays

*''Stone Marmalade'' (co-written with Leslie Scalapino; Singing Horse Press, 1996) *''Often'' (co-written with Barbara Guest; Kenning Editions, 2001) *''Island of Lost Souls'' (Nomados, 2004)

References

External links

Links to online works by Kevin Killian
* Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Killian, Kevin 1952 births 2019 deaths People from Smithtown, New York Writers from New York (state) Writers from San Francisco Lambda Literary Award winners American LGBT dramatists and playwrights American male novelists 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American LGBT poets American LGBT novelists American male short story writers 20th-century American poets 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American poets American male poets American male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners American Book Award winners 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers California College of the Arts faculty LGBT people from New York (state) American bisexual writers