Kirsten Bakis

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 University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, a grant from the Michener/Copernicus Society of America.

She published her first novel, Lives of the Monster Dogs, in 1997.[2] In 2017, the novel was reissued.[2][3]

She has taught at Hampshire College and was a writer-in-residence at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York in 2005. She is currently living in New York's lower Hudson Valley with her two children and two dogs. Her second novel King Nyx will be published in February, 2024.

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.[4] 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."[2] 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.""[5] 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."[3]

• 2004 Whiting Award for fiction
• New York Times Notable Book for the year, for Lives of the Monster Dogs[2]
• Orange Prize for Fiction shortlisted, for Lives of the Monster Dogs[2]
• Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, for Lives of the Monster Dogs[2]

• Official website
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation