Christopher Bernard

I am a writer and editor living in San Francisco. I am also the founder and co-editor of the literary and arts webzine Caveat Lector (www.caveat-lector.org) and contribute regularly to the monthly online magazine Synchronized Chaos Magazine (www.synchchaos.com). I also publish photographs and give readings.

My books include the novels A Spy in the Ruins, Voyage to a Phantom City, and Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Cafe; two books of short fiction, In the American Night and Dangerous Stories for Boys; and three poetry collections: The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs; Chien Lunatique, and The Socialist’s Garden of Verses (winner of a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and named one of the “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews). I have also written plays, including The Beast and Mr. James.

My work has appeared in several anthologies and many periodicals, including cultural and arts journalism in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Philadelphia Inquirer and elsewhere, and poetry and fiction in literary reviews in the U.S. and U.K. I have also written plays that have been produced and radio broadcast, in part or complete, in the San Francisco Bay Area. My poetry films have been screened in San Francisco and my poetry and fiction have been nominated for the Puschcart Prize and Best of the Web. In 2019, I received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.