About
Céline Keating is an award-winning writer formerly of New York City and now living in Bristol, Rhode Island. She is the author of three novels, Layla (2011), a Huffington Post featured title, Play for Me (2015), a National Indie Excellence Book award finalist, and The Stark Beauty of Last Things (2023). The Stark Beauty of Last Things was a 2024 Great Group Read selection, and won gold in Regional Fiction (National Indie Excellence Award) and bronze in Regional fiction (Independent Publishers Book Award, IPPY), among other awards.
Céline’s short fiction has been published in many literary magazines, including Appearances, Echoes, Emry’s Journal, Mount Hope, The North Stone Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Santa Clara Review. Her short story “Home” received the first-place 2014 Hackney Award for Short Fiction. An excerpt from her new novel received the 2021 First Place award in fiction at the Tucson Festival of Books. She is a regular contributor to guitar review site Minor7th.com. Her music journalism and other articles have appeared in Acoustic Guitar, Coastal Living, Guitar World, and Poets & Writers magazines. Céline is also the co-editor of On Montauk, A Literary Celebration.
Céline grew up in Queens, New York. She earned a Masters in Creative Writing from City College, CUNY. For many years a resident of Montauk, New York, she serves on the board of environmental organization Concerned Citizens of Montauk.
Featured Work
The Stark Beauty of Last Things
In THE STARK BEAUTY OF LAST THINGS, a small web of people wrestle over the fate of the last undeveloped stretch of wild land in Montauk, a town on the far reaches of Long Island at risk from climate change.
Clancy is a thirty-six year old insurance adjuster who visits Montauk hoping to reconnect with the Big Brother who meant the most to him during his time in foster care. But when that man dies and leaves his ownership vote for the undeveloped parcel to Clancy, Clancy finds himself in a tense, possibly hostile, position - right when he believes he has finally found a place to belong. Everyone has a stake in the outcome of the vote: Julienne, an artist and hotel owner fighting to save her business and the land she adores; Theresa, a bartender whose trailer park home is threatened by coastal erosion; and Molly and Billy, a young couple being pressured to sell.
In this beautifully written novel told in multiple voices, and in which the land itself becomes a character, Keating writes movingly of our bonds to nature and our bonds to each other, and her deft, surprising, and even ingenious ending offers unexpected hope for our time.
