Kirsten Imani Kasai

Kirsten Imani Kasai is a devotee of the Gothic and the author of three novels. A selection of The Denver Center for Trauma & Resilience Inclusiveness Book Club, her Afro-Gothic novel The House of Erzulie (2018, Shade Mountain Press) was described by Booklist as “a propulsive read, full of commentary on ethnic identity, mental illness, and power.”

Proclaimed “biopunk arctic witchery” by i09, her speculative fiction novel Ice Song (2009, Del Rey) won the 2010 San Diego Book Award. Its sequel, Tattoo (2011, Del Rey), earned comparisons to the work of Ursula K. Le Guin, Tanith Lee, and Angela Carter. Kirsten’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Transition, a journal of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, Bucovina Literara, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, Drunk Monkeys, San Diego Reader, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, and The Body Horror Book among others. According to Foreword Reviews, “Kirsten makes the macabre beautiful.”

Teaching and research interests include African American and postcolonial Diasporic literature, body horror and the Gothic in fiction and film, hybrid and experimental storytelling forms, speculative fiction, absent voices in historical witchcraft, feminist utopias, and representations of mixed (biracial) people in contemporary American literature.