Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan (born 26 May 1964)[1] is an Irish-born American paleontologist and writer of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novellas, and vignettes.

After the death of their father, Kiernan moved to the United States as a young child with their mother[2] Susan Ramey Cleveland and younger sister Mary Angela (Máire Aingeal).

Much of their childhood was spent in the small town of Leeds, Alabama, and early interests included herpetology, paleontology, and fiction writing.

[5][6] More recent papers include one on the biostratigraphy of Alabama mosasaurs, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (2002) and "First record of a velociraptorine theropod (Tetanurae, Dromaeosauridae) from the Eastern Gulf Coastal United States" (2004).

As of 2019, Kiernan is a research associate and fossil preparator at McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama, again studying mosasaurs, as well as Cretaceous turtles.

In 2020, they coauthored on a paper describing a new large fossil sea turtle, Asmodochelys parhami, from the Demopolis Chalk of Alabama.

[8] In 2022, they coauthored the description of a new giant freshwater turtle from the Late Cretaceous Mooreville Chalk of Alabama, Appalachemys ebersolei, a previously unknown macrobaenid with a shell more than 80 cm.in length.

[9] In 2023, they were the senior author on a paper describing two new species of the rare mosasaur Ectenosaurus, E. tlemonectes and E. shannoni, from the Niobrara and Mooreville formations of Kansas and Alabama, respectively.

To date, Kiernan's work has been translated into German, Italian, Chinese, French, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Russian, Korean, and Japanese.

[16]Much of Kiernan's earlier work, such as Silk, is set among or alludes to the aesthetics of the goth and punk rock subcultures, elements which are generally absent in their later novels.

"[17] In his review of The Red Tree, H. P. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi writes: "Kiernan already ranks with the most distinctive stylists in our field – Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany, Thomas Ligotti.

"[19] In 1996 and 1997, Kiernan fronted an Athens, Georgia-based "goth-folk-blues band", Death's Little Sister,[20] named for Neil Gaiman's character Delirium.

They were the band's vocalist and lyricist, and the group enjoyed some success on local college radio and played shows in Athens and Atlanta.

Kiernan left the band in February 1997 because of their increased responsibilities writing for DC Comics and because Silk had recently sold.

[citation needed] They were briefly involved in Crimson Stain Mystery, a studio project, two years later, which produced one EP to accompany a special limited edition of Silk, illustrated by Clive Barker (Gauntlet Press, 2000).