Impossible Princess »

Kevin Killian has written a book of poetry, Argento Series, novels Shy and Arctic Summer, a memoir, Bedrooms Have Windows, and short story collections Little Men, a PEN Oakland award winner, and I Cry Like a Baby. Killian co-wrote Jack Spicer's biography, Poet Be Like God, and co-edited Spicer's The Train of Thought, The Tower of Babel, and collected poems.

Impossible Princess is a book John Rechy's or Dennis Cooper's characters would read.

Publishers Weekly

Ten homoerotic stories by Killian (Spreadeagle) explore startling encounters between the straight and gay worlds. Several of the stories, set in the 1970s, appeared in Killian's previous collections, such as “Hot Lights,” in which a strapped-for-cash student gets hired for a hardcore porn shoot, and “Spurt,” set in a Long Island motel where a couple of commuters congregate to indulge in morbid sex. Others are elaborate romances, such as “Dietmar Lutz Mon Amour,” where an erotic encounter with a security guard in the basement of San Francisco's De Young museum provides a fulfilling intellectual kinship for the married narrator, and “Too Far,” in which a straight swimming pool salesman from Maryland clearly wants to experiment with a man at a party, though he may get more than he anticipates. Killian is best being self-consciously writerly, as in “Rochester,” in which a naïve writer arrives at the dilapidated home of the legendary writer “Kevin Killian,” only to discover a decrepit has-been who keeps a pet chimpanzee typing in the bedroom. Fans of Killian's work will be pleased to find fresh stimulation with shades of Dennis Cooper. (Nov.)

Young Hank Williams 7

Too Far 13

Zoo Story 37

Spurt 43

Ricky's Romance 61

Dietmar Lutz Mon Amour 73

Hot Lights 109

White Rose 119

Rochester 131

Greensleeves 147