I am so grateful that NYT Sports Editor Jason Stallman honored my research during his Pulitzer speech to The New York Times newsroom on Monday, April 15th. It was an honor to help create the NYT article and e-book, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, honoring “a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to quality of writing, originality and concision, using any… Read More

For the past six weeks, I have spent my Saturdays learning the business of writing as part of the EDGE Professional Development Program for Literary Artists.  I am grateful to Artist Trust for supporting my study with funds from the Latino/a Scholarship for Career Training. On Sunday, April 14th from 1 to 4 p.m., I and the other EDGE graduates gathered to read at The Elliott Bay Book Company at 1521 Tenth Avenue in Seattle, Washington,… Read More

I’ve turned to The Stranger for arts and culture events in Seattle since I moved here eight years ago.  So it was with unseemly amounts of satisfaction that I read Paul Constant’s kind endorsement of the Cheap Beer & Prose reading I gave on March 21st with Nicole Hardy, Anca Szilágyi and Corinne Manning at Richard Hugo House. We are, ahem, “an especially exciting lineup of fresh new faces in Seattle… Read More

Beginning in April 2012, I conducted research for The New York Times’ multimedia narrative feature entitled Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.  I am proud to be a small part of the team that produced the December 2012 story, which was written by John Branch. I began researching the story by compiling multimedia narrative biographies of the people involved in the February 2012 avalanche, as well as creating  chronologies of… Read More

Thank you to Dark Coast Press for inviting me to read at the 2012 Seattle debut of LitCrawl, a series of readings in bookstores and bars.  DCP Editor-in-Chief Jarret Middleton, Gabe Blackwell, John Hamilton, Elissa Washuta and Corinne Manning joined me at Spine & Crown Bookstore to prove that words are intoxicating. On Thursday, October 18th, many friends and unknown persons showed up to this tiny bookstore despite the rain.  We all carried… Read More

I am grateful that veteran reporter Bill Lucey looks me up every once in a while to see how I’m doing since the Seattle P-I closed.  After checking in with me in 2010 for The Huffington Post, Bill called me earlier this summer to chat about writing and life after newspapers.  Thanks to him for this profile on his  site newspaperalum.com!

Anca Szilagyi is one of my favorite writers.  We met at the MFA program at the University of Washington, where she counseled me on the vagaries of workshopping a novel.  On August 1st, I was honored to help her read the title story of her collection More Like Home than Home, which she is polishing as a 2012-13 Made at Hugo House fellow. Along with Corinne Manning, Anca curates The Furnace… Read More

I began teaching at the University of Washington this year, spending three quarters as an instructor of English 131, a first-year student composition class, and two quarters as an intern for English 484, an advanced prose class taught by my Master of Fine Arts creative manuscript supervisor, Author and Professor David Shields. David and UW Professor and Author Shawn Wong are advising me as I complete and revise my novel… Read More

Castalia rocked Richard Hugo House on Tuesday, April 3rd.  Listen to me read from my novel Subduction by clicking here and choosing “Kristen Young” from the list.  I also recommend listening to Jean Burnet and Elizabeth Colen. The Castalia Reading series features a night of poetry and prose by students, faculty and alumni of the creative writing MFA program at the University of Washington.  Here’s the event listing from Castalia organizer… Read More

“Represent! 98118” Seeks Documentarians, Donors: Help Chronicle “A Day in the Life of 98118”   On October 5, 2011, scores of writers, photographers, filmmakers, artists and students will spend the day documenting life in America’s most diverse zip code in an event called “Represent! 98118”. Writer and Educator Nancy Rawles dreamed up “Represent! 98118” after she realized she didn’t know what it meant to live in 98118, which has been… Read More