Lives of the Monster Dogs

Kirsten Bakis was born in 1968 in Switzerland to Swiss emigrant parents and raised in Westchester County, New York. She is an American novelist best known for her debut novel Lives of the Monster Dogs (1997), which won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize; her second novel King Nyx was published in 2024. Bakis holds a degree from New York University and has taught creative writing at institutions including Yale Writers' Workshop.