Kenyon, T.K.

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Kenyon, T.K.

PERSONAL:

Married; children. Education: University of Iowa, M.F.A., Ph.D., 2003; completed postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Stony Point, NY.

CAREER:

Research scientist and writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Truman Capote fellow, Iowa Writers' Workshop, 1997; Alsop Review Fiction Contest, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Rabid, Kunati (Largo, FL), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Stories, Big Muddy, and American Short Fiction. Author of the blog Science for Non-Majors.

SIDELIGHTS:

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, T.K. Kenyon is also a research scientist whose postdoctoral work centered on neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Kenyon is an accomplished writer, with seven published short fiction pieces and five papers published in scholarly journals. Her first novel, Rabid, was published in 2007 and features a multitalented protagonist named Dante who is both priest and neuroscientist. Sent to New England to uncover a pedophilic priest, he has a crisis of faith after falling for a parishioner named Bev, who sought Dante's guidance after learning of her husband's infidelity. The novel takes a suspenseful turn when Bev's jealousy ultimately leads to murder. Writing for Bookslut, Barbara J. King remarked: "Kenyon pulls together all the beauty and terror found in religion and all the beauty and terror found in science to create a fictional space where every person seeks light, whether at the lab bench, or at the church altar, or both." King concluded that Kenyon "makes you think, and you have fun along the way." Booklist reviewer David Pitt found the novel "quite unlike most standard commercial fare, a genre-bending story—part thriller, part literary slapdown." A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented that "Kenyon manages to rein her characters in nicely at the conclusion of this overwritten yet impressive medical thriller."