Artforum Mourns and Celebrates the Life of Kevin Killian (1952-2019)

We are beyond sad that poet, novelist, playwright, art critic, scholar, prolific Amazon reviewer, and collaborator and friend to scores of artists, Kevin Killian, died this past weekend. One of the many remembrances to come across our radar is this tribute written by Artforum which notes: "Killian was a central figure of San Francisco’s New Narrative movement, which he once said was 'not so much a style as a way of living in the world.'" Reading on from there: 

Killian has written and edited poetry and short story collections—including I Cry Like a Baby (2001), Action Kylie (2008), and Tweaky Village (2014)—essays, three novels, a memoir, and more than fifty plays for the San Francisco Poets Theater on topics ranging from AIDS to the films of Whitney Houston. His wife, the novelist, poet, and essayist Dodie Bellamy, confirmed his passing. 

Born on December 24, 1952, Killian earned his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University and his master’s degree at Stony Brook University before he moved to San Francisco in 1980. He penned his first novel, Shy—which followed a number of teenage misfits living in Smithtown, Long Island—in 1989, and his most recent novel, Spreadeagle—which took twenty-two years to finish—in 2012.

“Spreadeagle has so much going on—it’s an AIDS Novel, a Gay Novel, a Murder Mystery, a Comedy of Ill Manners, a City Mouse and Country Mouse—but is ultimately a satire of all those genres as well as of the two milieus that the book takes for its setting: San Francisco and a rural Central Valley enclave, the fictional town of Gavit,” Travis Jeppesen wrote in Bookforum. “If it sounds like a lot to take on, Killian gives himself plenty of space; the novel approaches six hundred pages, every one of which serves as a showcase for its author’s comic genius and wit.”

Learn more about Killian's life and writing at Artforum.