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 and shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Subduction won Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book awards. Subduction was also a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Kristen is the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, a 2021 finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her essays, book reviews and investigations appear most recently in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Hostos Review, the Seattle Times, Seattle Met, Psychology Today, Hobart, Crosscut, Moss and Fiction International.

Kristen is the 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer of Seattle University. A frequent performer and moderator, she was commissioned to record an hourlong recital of her prose for the Library of Congress PALABRA archive. As 2018-20 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, Kristen mentored more than 100 writers and created that institution’s first Spanish language literary programs with Seattle Escribe. Her personal essays are anthologized in Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19, which won a 2021 Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity, Pie & Whiskey, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, and Keep A Green Bough: Voices from the Heart of Cascadia. Her short fiction has been published by the Los Angeles Review, Joyland Magazine, wildness, Pacifica Literary Review and the forthcoming anthology Indomitable/Indomables. From 2021-23, Kristen is giving a bilingual writing workshop throughout Washington state for the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau, and she teaches a personal essay workshop for women at the University of Washington Continuum College.

Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. Her reporting for the Guardian and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been recognized by the Society for Features Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Kristen earned fellowships from UC Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center, the Jack Straw Writing Program and the UW Graduate School, where she was a GO-MAP Scholar. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in History & Literature, later earning her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington. From 2016 to 2019, Kristen was board chair of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit news studio she co-founded in 2009 to serve vulnerable peoples and places of the Pacific Northwest. InvestigateWest’s award-winning stories led to a dozen new laws to improve the environment and the lives of foster families, people of color caught in the criminal justice system, health care workers and government transparency advocates. @kristenmillares