A prize-winning journalist and essayist, Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, a “brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times, and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine. Published by Red Hen Press in 2020, Subduction won Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book Awards. Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Subduction was also a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Her debut was featured in BOMB Magazine, The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature, which considered Subduction to be one of “the year’s best books.”

On October 6, 2026, Kristen will release her memoir-in-essays Desire Lines, called “searching, generous, and unrelenting” by Melissa Febos, “explosive and daring” by Luis Alberto Urrea, and “alive with style and poetic lyricism” by Weike Wang. Published by Red Hen Press, Desire Lines is a forensic investigation into the emotional topography of being a woman, a writer, and a mother. Kristen received a 4Culture grant in 2025 to narrate the audiobook for Desire Lines and support its translation into Senderos del deseo by Majel Reyes Quesada. “In Desire Lines, Kristen Millares Young explores womanhood, human rights, and identity with a moral imperative and artistry that few writers achieve,” writes Brandon Hobson. “She is an immense literary talent, and this remarkable book should be read by all.”

In 2025, Kristen is in residence at the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska and for a UNESCO Cities of Literature exchange program in Reykjavík, Iceland. She also joined the creative writing faculty of the Oregon State University-Cascades low residency MFA program after serving as Distinguished Visiting Writer for OSU-Cascades in 2024 and for Seattle University and the University of Washington Bothell in 2023. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she has given fifty free and bilingual writing workshops with the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau since 2021. Kristen is the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, a 2021 Washington State Book Award finalist. Her personal essays appear in the Guardian, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana, Hobart, and Moss, as well as the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, Pie & Whiskey, No Contact (Catapult, 2026), and Alone Together, winner of a 2021 Washington State Book Award. She reviews books for the Washington Post.

Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. The Society for Features Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers honored her reporting for the Guardian and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Kristen was a fellow at UC Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center, the Jack Straw Writing Program, and the UW Graduate School, where she earned her MFA as a GO-MAP Scholar. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in History & Literature. From 2016 to 2019, Kristen was board chair of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom she co-founded in 2009 to serve the people and places of the Pacific Northwest. InvestigateWest’s stories have led to a dozen new laws to improve the environment and the lives of health care workers, people of color caught in the criminal justice system, and government transparency advocates. She sings with Last of the RedHot Mamas, a blues band heard on KEXP and KBCS. @kristenmillares