Nicolette de Csipkay grew up in Riverside, California, the daughter of parents who had emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary during World War II. She graduated from the Creative Writing Program at University of Colorado, Boulder. Her stories have appeared in Rohwedder, Short Story, Gulf Coast, Telescope, and Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction, among other venues. She lives and teaches in Buffalo, NY.

Reminiscent at turns of Angela Carter, David Lynch, and Isak Dinesen, Nicolette de Csipkay's debut signals a fresh, versatile talent worthy of wide attention.

"Nicolette de Csipkay's seductive first collection reveals a violently brilliant imagination at work." - Rain Taxi Review of Books

"This is a polished gem of a book. Exquisitely written, elegantly imagined, de Csipkay's stories are dreams hardened into dagger points. From the pleasure trip that becomes a little too Kafkesque to the floral sacrifice that turns deadly, de Csipkay's precise and dazzling prose twists and mutates, serpentine, from fairy tale to gothic horror, from banality to peril. Black Umbrella Stories is simultaneously enchanting and disturbing, and is an absolutely original debut." - Jeffrey DeShell