Impossible Princess

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, including My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008). With his wife Dodie Bellamy, he edited the long-running poetry zine Mirage/Periodical. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in, among others, Best American Poetry 1988 (ed. John Ashbery), and Discontents (ed. Dennis Cooper). Impossible Princess won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Erotic Fiction. Kevin Killian died on June 15th, 2019.