Gary Krist

Gary Michael Krist (born 1957) is an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, travel journalism, and literary criticism. Before turning to narrative nonfiction with The White Cascade, a book about the 1910 Wellington avalanche, City of Scoundrels (2012), about Chicago's tragic summer of 1919, and Empire of Sin (2014), about the reform wars in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, Krist wrote three novels--Bad Chemistry (1998), Chaos Theory (2000), and Extravagance (2002). He has also written two short story collections--The Garden State (1988) and Bone by Bone (1994). His most recent books are The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles (2018) and Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco (2025).

Career He has been a frequent book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post Book World. His satire pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Outlook section, and Newsday, and his stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, and Esquire, and on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts. His short stories have also been anthologized in such collections as Men Seeking Women, Writers' Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories.

He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. "Empire of Sin" was named one of the top ten books of 2014 by The Washington Post and Library Journal. Krist has been awarded a 2020-2021 Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the research for Trespassers at the Golden Gate, about the early history of San Francisco.

Life Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Krist is a graduate of Princeton University. In 1979–80, he studied literature at the Universitaet Konstanz (Germany) on a Fulbright Scholarship. The author has been profiled in The New York Times Book Review (November 6, 1988) and the Style section of The Washington Post (February 25, 2007).

Krist and his wife live in Jersey City, New Jersey.