Colin Dickey is the author, most recently, of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (Viking), as well as Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius and Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith. He is also the co-editor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. He currently teaches creative writing at National University.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Beast Mode
Colin Dickey on Peter Sahlins’s “1668: The Year of the Animal in France”...
Speak, Mongoose: On “Gef!: The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose”
Colin Dickey on the tale of a talking mongoose....
Unnatural Selection: On Extinction and De-Extinction
Colin Dickey reviews two books on extinction and de-extinction....
On Pictures of Ships
In 1955, UFO researcher Morris K. Jessup claimed to have received a letter from a man calling himself Carlos Allende, pointing ...
Making New Friends: The Genetics of Animal Domestication
The story of the Russian geneticists who domesticated the silver fox....
The Pets’ War: On Hilda Kean’s “The Great Cat and Dog Massacre”
Colin Dickey on Hilda Kean’s “The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two’s Unknown Tragedy.”...
Forging Nature: On “The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium”
Colin Dickey reviews Juan Pimentel’s “The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History.”...
Forgotten Accounts: Didion’s “South and West”
Didion's latest "South and West": irredeemably past, and yet speaking to the current impasse....
Tenure and Diversity: An Interview with Patricia Matthew
Colin Dickey talks to Patricia Matthew about her new essay collection, "Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure."...
Up Out of the Darkness: A New History of Monsters
Colin Dickey reviews Leo Braudy’s “Haunted: Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds.”...
Oliver and Sarah: The Story of the Winchesters
A history of the Winchester family and fortune....
The Case Against Cats
Are you a cat person or a bird person? Colin Dickey reviews Peter P. Marra and Chris Santella’s “Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Deadly Killer.”...
On Killing Dogs
Colin Dayan's book "With Dogs at the Edge of Life" attempts to mark out the territory of dogs in our lives....
Saint Joan
"Much of Didion's writing about LA reads not as accurate description of the city but as penance for her great sin of leaving New York."...
Two-Way Monologue: How to Get Past Science vs. Religion
Anyone tempted to believe that the history of human thought tends toward progress is well advised to consider the long-running, endlessly circular arguments over science and religion....
Messy Places
A review of Kate Brown's "Dispatches from Dystopia," which tells stories of Chernobyl and other corrupted, polluted areas....
Shoring Against the Ruins
A new biography on Walter Benjamin lays out his major works as part of an evolution of thought....
Subterranean Homesick Blues: Salomon Kroonenberg’s “Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur”
Triptych image: A fresco detail of Hell from the medieval church St. Nicolas in Raduil Village, Bulgaria, Anton Lefterov IN APRIL ...
Peak Adventure: On Mountaineering and the Enlightenment
SOME YEARS AGO, I found myself stranded at a corporate seminar, ensconced in a frigid hotel conference room, eyes glazing through ...
The Dispossessed: Brian Levack’s “The Devil Within”
IT WAS IN NOVEMBER of 1565 that Nicole Obry of Vervins, France, first became possessed. Sixteen-years-old, recently married, and illiterate, she ...
One Book Opens Another: On “The Secrets of Alchemy”
IN 1460, ONE OF MANY book-hunting monks in the employ of the great Cosimo de Medici returned to Florence from a ...
On the Trail of the Elusive Vampire Squid from Hell
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE COAST of the Monterey Bay, a group of biologists are hunting vampires. In September 2012, the Proceedings of ...
No Success Like Failure
ON MAY 8, 1842, A TRAIN loaded with passengers from Versailles to Paris in the wake of a birthday celebration for ...
King & I: Stephen King and a Balanced Diet
On the debate over Stephen King's literary relevance...
We Will Re-Bury You
AT THE SCENE OF HIS MOTHER'S FUNERAL, Elvis Presley — invincible sex symbol, cocksure performer, the man who changed the world and ...
