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Impossible Princess
“Whatever his subject matter, Killian maintains full authority—offering up a homoerotic interpretation of Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and a brilliant imagined history of Hank Williams. Here, under the author’s careful control and easygoing charisma, everything seems up for grabs, and almost anything seems possible.”—Time Out New York
Impossible Princess is the third collection of gay short fiction by PEN Award–winning San Francisco–based author Kevin Killian. A member of the “new narrative” circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker, Killian is a master short story writer, crafting campy and edgy tales that explore the humor and darkness of desire. A former director of Small Press Traffic and a co-editor of Mirage/Periodical, Killian co-wrote Jack Spicer’s biography, Poet Be Like God, and co-edited three Spicer books, including My Vocabulary Did This To Collected Poems. His latest book, Action Kylie, is a collection of poems devoted to Kylie Minogue.
Impossible Princess is the third collection of gay short fiction by PEN Award–winning San Francisco–based author Kevin Killian. A member of the “new narrative” circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker, Killian is a master short story writer, crafting campy and edgy tales that explore the humor and darkness of desire. A former director of Small Press Traffic and a co-editor of Mirage/Periodical, Killian co-wrote Jack Spicer’s biography, Poet Be Like God, and co-edited three Spicer books, including My Vocabulary Did This To Collected Poems. His latest book, Action Kylie, is a collection of poems devoted to Kylie Minogue.
156 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2009
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234 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Killian
86 books72 followersKevin Killian was an American poet, author, and playwright of primarily LGBT literature. He is also a highly regarded editor. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009. His novel, Impossible Princess, won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award as the best gay erotic fiction work of 2009. Killian is also co-founder of the Poets Theater, an influential poetry, stage, and performance group based in San Francisco.
He is married to Dodie Bellamy.
He is married to Dodie Bellamy.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 8, 2016
"'When pressed to account for her affinity to gay men, Moira always smiled and said, "I am a gay man, trapped in a woman’s body…This is San Francisco!"' At once funny, knowing, sexy, and a tad twisted, Moira (a character in Kevin Killian’s story “Greensleeves”) reflects the overall tone of Impossible Princess, an eclectic collection of short fiction that sparkles, sizzles, and arouses the intellect."
-Jim Gladstone, Passport Magazine
Colin Herd, Chroma
“‘What portion of one’s personality is a fiction?’ . . . It’s a question that swims through [Impossible Princess:] . . . It swims through, dives in, submerges itself, reemerges and winsomely skinny-dips in the at times murky, at turns sparkling ponds of Killian’s energetic, muscular, sassy, exquisite prose."
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."
-Jim Gladstone, Passport Magazine
Colin Herd, Chroma
“‘What portion of one’s personality is a fiction?’ . . . It’s a question that swims through [Impossible Princess:] . . . It swims through, dives in, submerges itself, reemerges and winsomely skinny-dips in the at times murky, at turns sparkling ponds of Killian’s energetic, muscular, sassy, exquisite prose."
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."
September 5, 2020
I don't know whether I want to fuck, get fucked, set a government building on fire or all of the above at the same time while also downing a bottle of Chablis. Kevin Killian was a true gem.
January 4, 2025
this is good and it is genius. i am so glad i picked it up.....i was feeling out of sorts and i knew kevin would help me out and he did!!!! I LOVE how he does the metatextual/referential - all of it is so sly and silly and overdone in the best way. like the chimpanzee typing at the typewriter like crazy (reminding me of the jughead paradox) which is telling us the story as it happens. and the flannery o'connor story was so hilarious and awesome it blew my mind. i think those two were my favorites. i read this book to fast tho. because it was so good.
February 6, 2010
I seriously am not reading at all since we got internet access at my house! Man, it took me like two months to read this book, which is like a hundred and sixty pages. And I was super into it! I just can't focus on anything, I'm in the middle of The Intuitionist, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, totally stoked to start Baba Yaga Laid An Egg, I got a copy of some upcoming Chelsea Handler thing I'm not gonna lie, I'm curious about... I dunno, man, my point is just that I kept finding this in my bag and being like 'what the fuck, this book! Yes!'
So, the New Narrative. We have talked about this. I love it. Kevin Killian's writing is informal, direct, explicitly
(and queerly) sexual, funny, and sometimes so straightfaced it's hard to know whether a line is a joke. There's tons of brutal, bloody sex. He plays with the idea that he is, in any way, famous, which is hilarious.
In fact, it's a little bit awkward for this to be my first exposure to his work- there's this very clear acknowledgment and fucking-with of the idea that he's this notorious author that's familiar to me, even though I've barely published anything- I still like to talk about how famous I am and stuff. Killian takes it one step further by co-authoring a story about how he's a psychotic writing guru, with a literal monkey at a typewriter writing his stuff for him, and then including in the same collection a more or less memoir-seeming story also about the character Kevin Killian, based around an affair with a German art guy (a classy turn of phrase if ever there was one).
So... um. There you go. Yes to Kevin Killian.
So, the New Narrative. We have talked about this. I love it. Kevin Killian's writing is informal, direct, explicitly
(and queerly) sexual, funny, and sometimes so straightfaced it's hard to know whether a line is a joke. There's tons of brutal, bloody sex. He plays with the idea that he is, in any way, famous, which is hilarious.
In fact, it's a little bit awkward for this to be my first exposure to his work- there's this very clear acknowledgment and fucking-with of the idea that he's this notorious author that's familiar to me, even though I've barely published anything- I still like to talk about how famous I am and stuff. Killian takes it one step further by co-authoring a story about how he's a psychotic writing guru, with a literal monkey at a typewriter writing his stuff for him, and then including in the same collection a more or less memoir-seeming story also about the character Kevin Killian, based around an affair with a German art guy (a classy turn of phrase if ever there was one).
So... um. There you go. Yes to Kevin Killian.
February 6, 2026
I have this instinctive aversion to inserting my own name into a piece of writing. Even if the story is about me in one way or another, even if every word of it is true. There's something perverse about reading "Zach" on the page, like calling your cellphone with a burner in order to listen to your own voicemail.
Well. Impossible Princess is nothing (!) if not perverse. Among its collection of parody, erotica, and cum-drenched coming of age, a handful of stories feature their author in the starring role. "Kevin" the character repurposes the rope that killed his boyfriend for bondage sex, abandons a bloody and unconscious hookup in a hotel bathroom, and sucks and fucks everyone except his wife. And surely, you think, this can't be true.
After the reading, this one girl came up to me at a party and says, “Did that really happen to you? You left this room where somebody is possibly bleeding to death?” And I was like, “I know. I’m so ashamed and embarrassed about that.” And she slapped me across the face. She said, “You don’t deserve to live.” And that always stuck with me. It’s probably true.
My favorite stories are confessional. But there has to be more, an edge of self-awareness. Anyone can sit at a keyboard and type up whatever it is they're ashamed of, or conversely the reasons why they're better than everyone else. Impossible Princess knows better. For one, it's sexy, and sharply written (mostly), and infectiously delighted with itself.
Dietmar Lutz Mon Amour is the star of the show here. Something about throwing paper airplanes into Anton LaVey's attic window... and jesus, I had hackles about Ottessa Moshfegh casting one of her characters as a 9/11 victim, but here Killian conjures up the last moments of one Mark Bingham, look him up. In the airport lobby, Killian's "Mark" character peers up the leg of another man's shorts, and is mildly disappointed that he can't make out the man's balls.
I mean, wow, that's objectionable for so many reasons, but somehow Killian gets away with it here. I'm not sure what it says about my moral compass that I'll give this a pass, but Moshfegh's ending to 365 R & R "doesn't fly." Maybe it's just a question of, is the story good?
That last story, Greensleeves, rubbed me the wrong way, and Rochester before it was somewhat annoying. I guess you have to allow a short story collection a couple duds. {like a professor dropping the two lowest homework grades?}
Thanks for the rec, Shawn.
Well. Impossible Princess is nothing (!) if not perverse. Among its collection of parody, erotica, and cum-drenched coming of age, a handful of stories feature their author in the starring role. "Kevin" the character repurposes the rope that killed his boyfriend for bondage sex, abandons a bloody and unconscious hookup in a hotel bathroom, and sucks and fucks everyone except his wife. And surely, you think, this can't be true.
After the reading, this one girl came up to me at a party and says, “Did that really happen to you? You left this room where somebody is possibly bleeding to death?” And I was like, “I know. I’m so ashamed and embarrassed about that.” And she slapped me across the face. She said, “You don’t deserve to live.” And that always stuck with me. It’s probably true.
My favorite stories are confessional. But there has to be more, an edge of self-awareness. Anyone can sit at a keyboard and type up whatever it is they're ashamed of, or conversely the reasons why they're better than everyone else. Impossible Princess knows better. For one, it's sexy, and sharply written (mostly), and infectiously delighted with itself.
Dietmar Lutz Mon Amour is the star of the show here. Something about throwing paper airplanes into Anton LaVey's attic window... and jesus, I had hackles about Ottessa Moshfegh casting one of her characters as a 9/11 victim, but here Killian conjures up the last moments of one Mark Bingham, look him up. In the airport lobby, Killian's "Mark" character peers up the leg of another man's shorts, and is mildly disappointed that he can't make out the man's balls.
I mean, wow, that's objectionable for so many reasons, but somehow Killian gets away with it here. I'm not sure what it says about my moral compass that I'll give this a pass, but Moshfegh's ending to 365 R & R "doesn't fly." Maybe it's just a question of, is the story good?
That last story, Greensleeves, rubbed me the wrong way, and Rochester before it was somewhat annoying. I guess you have to allow a short story collection a couple duds. {like a professor dropping the two lowest homework grades?}
Thanks for the rec, Shawn.
November 11, 2025
So good that it makes me feel insane. Upon finishing it, I instantly felt it take up permanent residence in my brain. I already know I will be talking incessantly about it for years to come. Kevin Killian is a genius. If that doesn't sell you, this should: One of the best stories in here is a porn parody of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find". And I mean that as a very high compliment.
January 25, 2024
I found this odd, clever and eccentric collection of stories at a local little free library in San Francisco, hidden away in the cubbyhole awaiting its next victim, er, reader. The tales waver between outright erotica that most often takes a violent turn, to wacky erotica (a Faye Dunaway fanzine maker caught in a photocopier gets it from behind). Killian is one local author who's much missed.
January 5, 2019
loved this collection wanted to read more!
January 23, 2020
I did not realize that this was a book of short stories (erotic) when I picked it up. My favorite one was when Faye Dunaway office assistant has "group" with the xerox machine and the janitor. Highly recommend to those with a deviant sense of humor and an appreciation for well-edited prose.
February 15, 2022
Picked this up at City Lights in SF (it's one of theirs) to support them. Good writing, but not my cup of coffee.
June 19, 2024
Good, interested to read more by Killian
December 22, 2024
Everything just seemed to repeat itself. Like a one trick pony.
December 30, 2025
was looking for de sade sorta depravity,,, ended up loving the monkey on a typewriter short story which is one of the tamer ones (only one mention of p*nis)
December 17, 2009
Wow. I don't even know where to begin. A compatriot of Dennis Cooper, Killian is less gruesome than Cooper, yet somehow manages to be even MORE twisted. Hard to say whom I like better: while neither is a lazy-day beach read, Cooper's books are absolutely devastating and haunt you for days afterward, whereas Killian's keep you laughing and cringing all the way, every story redrawing the boundaries of what you consider normal and forcing you to think of the world anew.
But seriously folks: this is some sick, hilarious, literate, brutal sh1t. And I don't mean "Saw IV" sick. I mean "let's reconstruct a 9/11 hero's online gay sex orgy and while we're at it explicate Joseph Beuys, rape by Xerox machine, chimpanzees who love Nan Goldin, nasty bloody BDSM snuff sex, and Kylie Minogue" sick. Got it?
PS. Tired of Goodreads? Killian himself is a prolific Amazon reviewer.
But seriously folks: this is some sick, hilarious, literate, brutal sh1t. And I don't mean "Saw IV" sick. I mean "let's reconstruct a 9/11 hero's online gay sex orgy and while we're at it explicate Joseph Beuys, rape by Xerox machine, chimpanzees who love Nan Goldin, nasty bloody BDSM snuff sex, and Kylie Minogue" sick. Got it?
PS. Tired of Goodreads? Killian himself is a prolific Amazon reviewer.
December 30, 2012
I am not sure of the formal differences between new narrative and what used to be called slice of life. However it really doesn't matter as each of these stories feels direct and as comfortable/uncomfortable as visiting a close friend who begins to tell you the things about them you knew but hadn't heard. I guess it is this aspect of hearing what is normally not heard that I found appealing about the book. That and the sometimes funny or ironic interjections. Oh and I suppose this is a "filthy" book.
April 5, 2010
The stories in this book all have to do with some form of twisted eroticism, so I was dreading it a little because I hate reading about sex. I needn't have worried. Killian is so unfailingly inventive and unusual that readers will simply marvel and the pleasing variety and peculiarity of his scenarios. Offbeat in the best sense of the term.
May 27, 2016
All over the place with this collection. The sex and erotica was super welcome and really makes me wonder why so much work feels decorus around these moments. But he's a great writer, fun, fresh, funny, hip, edgy. Glad I stumbled on him and will pursue more.
February 25, 2010
Noirish bleak erotica. Dirty, gutsy short stories. Fast read. Not overly satisfying at the end of the day but certainly worth knowing about.
July 14, 2010
Sexy through and through. Killian rules!
October 18, 2011
Amusing - some crazy stuff - but repetitive. I kind of dislike gay books that are all about the sex - this bordered on short stories in the gay stylings of penthouse letters.
September 18, 2011
Two stories completely stood out "Too Far" and "Ricky's Romance", very clever.
July 11, 2015
Sexy and hilarious and over-the-top and very, very well written.
June 11, 2014
Exactly what I needed, when I needed it. Short stories that don't pull any punches, especially sexually. Eminently readable. I flew through this in one sitting.
March 15, 2024
still thinking about that skillet of love…
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews