Born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, Stefan Kiesbye moved to Berlin in the 1980s. He studied drama and worked in radio before starting a degree in American studies, English, and comparative literature at Berlin's Free University. A scholarship brought him to Buffalo, New York, in 1996. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. His first book, Next Door Lived a Girl, won the Low Fidelity Press Novella Award, and has been translated into German, Dutch, and Spanish. Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone made EW's Must List and was named one of the best books of 2012 by Slate editor Dan Kois. Ars Vivendi Verlag released the The LA Noir Fluchtpunkt Los Angeles (Vanishing Point) in February 2015, and The Staked Plains, a novella, was published by Saddle Road Press that same year. The Gothic novel Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames (Panhandler Books) came out in October 2016. His new novel Berlingeles is available from Revelore Press. Kiesbye teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University.