Bio

Alex de Campi has a magpie heart, which is a polite way of saying she could never pick a lane and stay in it. She writes graphic novels (the Eisner-nominated noir Bad Girls; the critically acclaimed pulp horror Dracula, Motherf**ker!, so many more), prose novels (medieval thriller The Scottish Boy; paranormal thriller Heartbreak Incorporated), film and TV (Blade Runner: Black Lotus), and sometimes poetry. Recently she and director Duncan Jones collaborated on the sci-fi thriller Madi: Once Upon A Time in the Future, and she and writer-editor Khai Krumbhaar produced True War Stories, an anthology of soldiers’ deployment tales. She once snuck across the Russian border, and later she explored the mountains of North Vietnam in a jeep armed only with a cassette tape of Boney M’s greatest hits. She had also sailed across the South China Sea a few times. She has lived in Hong Kong, London, Manila, briefly in Mexico, and one or two more places in between, but at present she resides in Manhattan with her daughter, a pair of elderly pit bulls, and a cat.

A Beginner’s Guide to Alex

The Alex de Campi starter kit:

• Fiction: The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino

• Nonfiction: Air Guitar, Dave Hickey

• Poetry: John Ashbery’s A Wave and WH Auden’s The Sea & The Mirror (a tie)

• Tea: Pu Erh in the morning, sencha in the afternoon

• Film: Le Cercle Rouge (Melville), Orphée (Cocteau), L’Avventura (Antonioni)

• Notebooks: Moleskine XL softcover, blank pages

• Pens: Free ballpoints from banks and hotels

• Writing music: Top Cat: Music for Rascals