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 available journalistic tool.”

Snow Fall’s author, John Branch, is a talented and generous man; he was also a 2012 finalist for the same prize.  The Pulitzer Committee praised John’s “evocative narrative about skiers killed in an avalanche and the science that explains such disasters, a project enhanced by its deft integration of multimedia elements.”

Jason and I met for the first time in the NYT newsroom on Pulitzer day of 2012, when prizes were awarded to David Kocieniewski and Jeffrey Gettleman.  They stood behind a red balustrade on the stairs.  I strained to see their faces from the bullpen.  That Jason took a meeting with me on that particular afternoon is evidence of his grace and kindness.

I never thought he’d announce my name one year later.

Together, we helped push the boundaries of modern journalism.  I am beyond fortunate to be on their team.

Both Jason and John have shown true graciousness under pressure during our year-long correspondence and working partnership, an all-hands effort that also led to the Peabody Award, which heralded “Snow Fall” as “spectacular example of the potential of digital-age storytelling, the web site combines thorough traditional reporting of a deadly avalanche with stunning topographic video.”

Moments before 2012 Pulitzers Announced to NYT Newsroom. Photo Credit to Kristen Millares Young.

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, which is truly an honor and a pleasure for me because I have loved that store since high school, when my mom moved to Seattle and brought me to their old Pioneer Square location, where we  wandered through the aisles of lovely books.

Special thanks go to Karen Maeda Allman from Elliott Bay and Nichole DeMent from Artist Trust for their dedication to supporting literature with vital organization skills.

We are, ahem, “an especially exciting lineup of fresh new faces in Seattle fiction.”  Our Annual Ladies’ Night reading was raucous, as it should be: we were “vetted for maximum entertainment” of a crowd that laughed, cried, clapped and stood in the aisles.  If you want to see me read a sex scene, check it out on the Hugo House YouTube channel, thanks to Samudre Media.  Sweet!

And here’s a back-slapping bear hug for Brian McGuigan, who made it all happen.  A fellow writer and performer, Brian recently wrote an excellent Salon essay about his childhood dream to be a mass murderer.  Instead, he became marketing and events director at Hugo House.  He’s the kind of guy who brings people together to celebrate literature with $1 cans of PBR.  He made a successful reading series, and then he made me part of it.  I’m grateful to him and to Hugo House.

Kristen Millares Young reads at Cheap Beer & Prose, Richard Hugo House, March 21 2013. Photo credit to Sarah Samudre.

Annual Ladies’ Night Reading at Cheap Beer & Prose, Richard Hugo House, March 21 2013. Photo credit to Sarah Samudre.

Brian McGuigan, Jeanine Walker & Kristen Millares Young at Cheap Beer & Prose, Sponsored by PBR at Richard Hugo House on March 21, 2013. Photo Credit to Sarah Samudre.

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 similar accidents near Stevens Pass, the history of the place itself and the rise of backcountry skiing.  I requested the coroner’s reports for the three good men who died; to provide context, I  interviewed people knowledgeable about backcountry skiing as an extreme sport and a retail industry.

Together, John and I hiked up through the spring salal and thick undergrowth at Tunnel Creek with a survivor of the tragedy; we interviewed avalanche and skiing experts and spent hours on the road going over what happened.  While writing the story, John handled a wealth of reporting with grace and intelligence.  I admire his methodology, which rests on approaching the story without judgment or preconceived notions.

The NYT published Snow Fall, which took John six months to report, as its own special section and launched a new partnership to sell the package as an e-book.  The NYT then made the story, viewed online by more than 3 million people, a focus of its reading club, citing media reports hailing its creation as “‘truly fantastic,’ a ‘beautiful’ integration of video, photos, and graphics ‘that makes multimedia feel natural and useful,‘ the ‘best designed big Web story ever‘ and even ‘the future of Web storytelling’.”

It’s the kind of story I’ve been hoping to help produce since I was a multimedia fellow at UC Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center.   Thank you to NYT deputy sports editor Jason Stallman for bringing me into the fold for Snow Fall.  I’ll never forget it — or Chris Rudolph, Johnny Brenan and Jim Jack, men who lived life to the fullest until their final breaths.

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 on down the sodden streets to the next venue, a mile away.  Only in Seattle.

Kristen Millares Young in Columbia City Library. Photo by Elizabeth Lowry

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!

Along with Corinne Manning, Anca curates The Furnace Reading Series, “a quarterly reading series showcasing one new prose writer (fiction, nonfiction, playwriting) at a time. Our mission is to encourage innovative storytelling and a vibrant literary community. Catch us live at the Hollow Earth Performance space, or listen online at Hollowearthradio.org.”

Thank you to Greg Bem for this video, in which I read the footnotes.  It was a pleasure to voice the metanarrative to the story for our performance, the inaugural reading of The Furnace series.

David and UW Professor and Author Shawn Wong are advising me as I complete and revise my novel Subduction, currently a 100,000 word manuscript about love, betrayal, family and theft.  I live and breathe the characters of that book, which is set on the Makah Indian Reservation in Neah Bay, WA.

I have been surprised by how much teaching has helped me clarify and deepen my relationship to the written word.  As part of the UW English Department’s teacher training, I took a pedagogy class with Expository Writing Program Director and Professor Anis Bawarshi, who encouraged me to develop my teaching philosophy website.  In it, I describe why writing matters to me.  While that subject is far too complex to address in this blog post — perhaps Jhumpa Lahiri can help —  here’s one element that I share with my students:

Why does writing matter?  Writing teaches us to understand the world around us.  In turn, it helps us to be understood by others.

In that quote, you can see my great hope.  I explain my teaching philosophy here.

I graduate from the UW MFA program in June 2012.  Feel free to contact me at k <at> kristenmyoung.com if you’re interested in my writing or teaching.

Although my UW experience has focused on the craft of composition and brief prose, I can also teach modern U.S. and Latin American literature, and I can do so in Spanish.  I am a multidisciplinary storyteller and seasoned journalist who can teach journalism, whether reporting, writing or producing multimedia content.

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 and UW colleague Valerie Arvidson, who also designed the poster:

April may be the cruelest month, but you can mitigate the misery by coming to Castalia TONIGHT! This month we have a stellar lineup that features first year poets Katie Hoffman and Elizabeth Colen and first year prose writer Elizabeth Weinberg. The second year prose writers will be represented by the lovely and mysterious Jean Burnet and the sage and beautiful Kristen Young. We are proud to feature Linda Bierds as this month’s faculty poet. Bierds has published many collections including Flights of the Harvest Mare, Heart and Perimeter, The Ghost Trio, The Seconds, First Hand, and most recently Flight: New and Selected Poems. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a MacArthur Genius Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts among others. We are excited and happy to have her in the Castalia series this month. Tues. May 1st is the last Castalia reading of the academic year, so we hope to see you all come out next month too to hear Brian Reed, Heather McHugh, and student writers Kori Linn, Calvin Pierce, Meredith Ridings and Bea Chang!

Meanwhile, for your enjoyment:

Songs from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

“Queen Alice”

“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 named “the most diverse zip code in America” based on U.S. Census Bureau data.  As a steering committee member for Represent! 98118, I hope you will join us on Wednesday, October 5^th to find answers to that question.  Together, we can help create a self-portrait of a culturally rich community.

We hope you will join us by lending your talents and ideas and by spreading the word to your friends and neighbors.  Anyone interested in documenting life in 98118 on that day is welcome to sign up at www.represent98118.org.  Children and youth are encouraged to participate but must have permission from parents and teachers. Area schools are invited to participate at any level.

“This project is definitely about celebrating diversity, but that’s not all there is to it,” said organizer Paul Nelson, the executive director of SPLAB, a nonprofit poetry and performance center based in Columbia City. “We chose the word “Represent!” rather than “Celebrate!” because the emphasis is on showing and noticing who’s here.”

Events are being planned at different venues throughout the 98118, but a complete list will not be available until September.  98118 includes Brighton, Columbia City, Genesee, Graham, Hillman City, Lakewood, New Holly, Othello, Pritchard Beach, Rainier Beach, Seward Park and South Beacon Hill.

If you have a public event planned for October 5^th, please let us know. If you’d like to plan an event and link it to “A Day in the Life of 98118,” please contact us.  Both “Represent! 98118” and SPLAB welcome donations to further this effort.

“Represent! 98118”is sponsored by the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods. Donations of time, money, materials, and services are needed for everything from printing posters and providing equipment to mentoring youth and feeding volunteers. Businesses and organizations can sponsor artists, provide space for exhibits and performances, offer membership or service discounts on October 5^th, and donate money for mailings.  http://www.splab.org