Ki Longfellow - A New Voice

A New Voice

From mid-1990 until the death of her husband in March 1995, Longfellow divided her time between a small farm in Brattleboro, Vermont and Stanshall's flat in Muswell Hill, London. Both she and their daughter Silky hoped that Stanshall would end his destructive habits, or be forced by ill health to stop.

Longfellow's second book Chasing Women was published in 1993 while she was living in London. After Stanshall's death a year and a half later, Longfellow stopped writing. When she slowly got back to work, she had found a new "voice" very different from her earlier writing. Her recent work has grappled with the loss of Stanshall, her difficult childhood, as well as a deep stream of spiritual yearning and a realization of the gnosis she experienced at the age of nineteen. She has also incorporated her own close brush with death when suffering pneumonia in 1990.

Since Stanshall's death, Longfellow has published under Ki (pronounced as in "sky"), the name Stanshall gave her after a vivid dream. In 2006, Longfellow was invited to contribute to Dan Burstein's non-fiction book Secrets of Mary Magdalene. (CDS Books, 2006)

Her novel, The Secret Magdalene (Eio Books edition), to date translated into Spanish, Czech, Chinese, Icelandic, and French has been adapted as a feature film by the noted director Nancy Savoca. The script is currently in pre-production. In June 2010, the book made the list of 100 All Time Best Historical Fiction Books.

Longfellow's novel about the 4th/5th century mathematician and philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt. Flow Down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria is the second volume in her trilogy on the Divine Feminine or Shakti. This book saw publication in September, 2009.

She has rewritten the script for Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera, to be staged somewhere in Britain as soon as possible. Peter Moss will once again act as musical director. (At the same time she is also working on her first nonfiction since writing for the British edition of Rolling Stone, New York's Ms, and various British magazines when she lived in England, a memoir of her life with Vivian called The Last Showboat, an Illustrated Memoir of Vivian Stanshall, the Old Profanity Showboat, & Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera.)

In late 2008, interest in restaging the Stanshall/Longfellow musical, never flagging, became a reality. The comic opera, trimmed by Ki from three hours to two, is now in pre-production for a British revival. A "Stinkfoot Showcase" played the Thekla in Bristol, England (where it was written and first staged), on July 20, 21, 22nd, and 24th of 2010. This was a showcase of Stinkfoot's songs backed by a full band and selected cast members (including Nikki Lamborn and Vivian and Ki's daughter Silky Longfellow-Stanshall) plus Tony Slattery as narrator and singer. It attracted the attention of major press (The Word magazine, Mojo magazine, BBC London & BBC Bristol), and theatres like the Bristol Old Vic. Work goes on to fund it for restaging in its entirety. What has come of this concert is a film (now in pre-production in 2012) based on the history of the Old Profanity Showboat, Vivian and Ki's life aboard, and the creation of their musical, Stinkfoot.

In May 2011 she published her first horror/psychological thriller, Houdini Heart, a book she says this of on her Facebook fan page: "Of all I've written, this is the one book I feel I've done well by. Meaning, I've never felt I've done justice to my subject before."

On January 20th, 2012, the Horror Writers Association announced that Houdini Heart was on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for "Outstanding Achievement in a Novel", 2011.

In February of 2012, Eio Books redesigned and reissued Longfellow's first published novel, China Blues.