Gothic and Speculative Fiction Novels

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Cover photography: Alanna Airitam

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​THE HOUSE OF ERZULIE
2018, Shade Mountain Press
Buy Local & Independent

Editors' Choice: Historical Novels Review 
The Center for Trauma & Resilience Inclusiveness Book Club

Audiobook available from major retailers
2019, Highbridge Audio
Narrated by Adenrele Ojo and Ron Butler 
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​Read an excerpt here
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  • "I rarely say that I can’t put a book down, but The House of Erzulie left me besotted too. Highly recommended." Historical Novels Review
  • The House of Erzulie "sits on the shelf with Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca: restless ghosts, body horror, dastardly secrets, loves that should not be." Adroit Journal
  • ​"Kirsten Imani Kasai makes the macabre beautiful. She crafts a story that explores superficial scares while also delving into more complex topics like generational trauma and the horrors of slavery. The House of Erzulie makes you wonder what truly haunts our history, and how, if ever, we can escape it." Foreword Reviews
  • "Kasai’s novel exists within a line of Gothic texts by authors such as Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Attica Locke, and others that work to expose the tangible manner in which the past still affects us in the present." Interminable Rambling
  • "Kasai explores the horrors of slavery and its legacy in this gothic tale that tingles on the verge of psychological horror." Library Journal
  • "Compelling and grim ... a propulsive read, full of commentary on ethnic identity, mental illness, and power. " Booklist
  • "A poetic exploration of the mysteries of love and desire; Kasai gives voice to the specters haunting the silences in marriages, and the horror that grows from secrets kept between husbands and wives. Intriguing and compelling at every turn, the novel confronts an awful truth about slavery and brings to light a little discussed fact of African American history. Provocative and enlightening, this novel is a pleasure to read." Maisha L. Wester​
  • "Kirsten Imani Kasai blurs the edges between dream and reality, madness and magic, beauty and brutality, darkness and desire, with an unflinching eye and lush, deeply visceral language. This book had me mesmerized, completely under its spell." Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis and The Selfless Bliss of the Body​
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ICE SONG
​(Book One)  2009, Del Rey/Random House
​Best Adult Books for High Schoolers , School Library Journal | Best Published Science-Fiction/Fantasy, San Diego Book Awards
  • ​"I'm loving it - it's like furry sexy biopunk arctic witchery. Really." Annalee Newitz, i09.com
  • "A near-perfect combination of fantasy, great storytelling and social commentary." Philadelphia Gay News
  • ​"Those looking for a powerful and provocative female voice in their fantasy reading fare should definitely pick up this stellar debut ... addictively readable, melancholic writing style..." Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble
  • "A deeply lyrical and sublimely haunting narrative powers this intriguing fusion of science fiction, fantasy and subtle social commentary." Barnes & Noble Feature Pick 
  • ​"Hard to put down...an unstoppable force [that] ends with a bang." Locus Magazine​
  • "Told in a quiet, sometimes almost dreamlike style reminiscent of fairy tales (though at times disturbing ones), Ice Song will appeal to teens interested in questions of identity and difference." School Library Journal
  • "Ice Song was fabulous ... a journey story of the sort female narrators rarely experience." Hathor's Legacy 
  • "Reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin's paradigm-shattering The Left Hand of Darkness, this piercingly moving story belongs in most fantasy collections." Library Journal
  • "Moody and slightly gruesome, this book is an original take on the hero's journey." Oxford Library Book Reviews​
  • "A boldly adventurous tale depicting a richly detailed world." Booklist
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​TATTOO
(Book Two) 2011, Del Rey/Random House
E-book includes four bonus short stories.​
  • "Ursula Le Guin fans rejoice: Kirsten Imani Kasai's Tattoo—her follow up to 2009's brilliant Ice Song — tackles the same kind of paradigm-shifting worlds Le Guin did so well...The fact that there are addictive aphrodisiacal tattoos in the story is just a kinky bonus." The Advocate
  • "Tattoo raises the stakes considerably...this novel is the most underrated of 2011, not receiving nearly enough attention. Comparisons to Ursula K. Le Guin, Tanith Lee, and Angela Carter are well-deserved, given the kinetic energy of Kasai’s style and her unique imagination." Jeff VanderMeer, Locus Magazine​
  • ​​​"Tattoo revels in the lushly erotic while remaining aware of the costs of addiction and self-indulgence." Publisher's Weekly​
  • ​"Very visual and quite dark, Tattoo just like its predecessor explores the corporate greed and the world of vice in a setting similar to Alaska during Gold Rush...The characters feel like they just stepped out from Rocky Horror Show - vivid, dramatic and always askew." Nocturnal Book Reviews
  • "Kasai’s Ice Song and Tattoo are so much more than just a fusion of visionary science fiction and folklore-powered fantasy – they’re deeply reflective societal self-examination. And, trust me, that reflection in the mirror isn’t pretty...Powered by a cast of emotionally compelling and memorable characters and a storyline impressively tapestried with provocative themes and ideas, Tattoo is essentially deeply philosophical and poetic contemplation cloaked in visionary science fiction...Readers looking for a strong new female voice in science fiction/fantasy should seek out and read asap." Paul Goat Allen, Unabashedly Bookish

Short Fiction, Essays & Poems

PictureSally Shore, Alex Boling, Kirsten Imani Kasai and Barbara Keegan at The New Short Fiction Series, LA.
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​"Brain in a Jar & Other Stories"  New Short Fiction Series, August 2016
LA's longest-running spoken word series presenting West Coast fiction's best new voices. 
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​​"Black Sun"  Drunk Monkeys, Oct. 2014
Penzance, Cornwall, UK, 24 July
@pzpierat  Gran says this is much worse than the Blitz. She wants to send me to my cousins in NY, USA, where the air’s better but all flights are down indefinitely.
@pzpierat  Tommy Lynn from the pawnshop came round today to buy Gran’s gold. She got £15 for her diamond wedding ring.
@pzpierat  Sleep for hours but we’re all totally knackered. Up at weird hours, hard to tell what’s when.
@pzpierat  Sea’s frozen. I could walk to St. Michael’s Mount across high tide just like Jesus Christ.

"Chen" Tattoo bonus e-book shorts , 2011​
"My father whistled a jaunty tune as he snapped tendons and broke the fragile bones of a woman to whom he had professed “love and forever.” The disposal was conducted at night, darkness to hide his crime if not his shame, slogging through Neubonne’s waste pits. The Telec river coughed up its vapors and sputum. The air smelled of rotted eggs, burnt hair and flesh, and the eddies of green-black filth that clogged the shore and plastered the hulls of boats. Tankers clanged in the harbor. Somatic scavengers pushed leather skiffs down the river, fishing up bits of stuff to reclaim and sell: clothing, stripped from that woman’s body and tossed into the water; her rings, sacrificed to the river bottom’s silt."

​"A Snail Without its Shell is a Slug" Art & Letters, Spring 2017 - Runner-up in the 2016 Unclassifiables contest.
"Before I can fully participate in an egalitarian partnership, I must first heal the narcissistic wound that has fragmented my core sense of self. Therefore, I’m beginning a therapeutic course of self-evaluation and supervised behavioral conditioning in order to communicate my needs and wishes without imposing damning, unrealistic expectations on you. It’s been nice knowing you.” (But having no myth to reference vain Narcissus and his auto-erotic folly, they would use different terminology.)"
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​“Best Served Cold,” Hunger: A Feast of Sensual Tales about Sex & Gastronomy ​(Sizzler Editions, 2013)
"White sheets, white hair, white the pallor of my bloodless skin. The last few grains of sand hovered, circling the neck of my hourglass. Time slid swiftly away. I had only enough energy to mark my consent form with an X, no time or strength enough to sign my own name. Odor of anesthesia, ether-like. The cut zippering my chest, sweat dripping down the surgeon’s brow. His name would make all the morning papers. He did it for his own glory, not mine. My only condition: give me my heart."
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​RHAPSODY IN SNAKESKIN | a succubi romance with a twist
​Ben, a lonely ticket-taker, meets a mysterious older women who entices him into an obsessive, sensual affair. Amara penetrates Ben's mind with unsettling power and he discovers, too late, the grim secret of her dark appetites. ​(audio)

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  ​ESSAYS
  POEMS