News, Uncategorized

SUBDUCTION named a staff pick by The Paris Review

SUBDUCTION is a staff pick in The Paris Review. It’s a real joy in a hard time thanks to West Coast editor Christian Kiefer, who read my novel like a writer and valued my book’s explorations. I have *always* wanted to be part of The Paris Review.

I’ll be frank. With more than a third of my 35 event tour cancelled, one third deferred and the last third in limbo, I have been feeling like a fraction of myself. I spent a year planning those panels, readings, performances, signings, conversations, engagements…planning to be present, to converse in person, which is what I do best.

But this is a bright moment, and so I want to honor the generosity of another writer who made space for me in a fraught season. It satisfies my heart and gives me a deep gladness that my book has been seen for its complexity. What a gift to be listed alongside Carl Phillips, Rosalía, Ina Garten and Fred Hersch.

You can buy SUBDUCTION by clicking on the cover image below.

 

 

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News

Ms. Magazine Preview: Feminist Books of 2020

 

Feminists held space for me to develop my own consciousness. When I was a girl in central Florida, Ms. Magazine reached me, and I knew I wasn’t alone in thinking this way. To be understood was a relief that gave me the freedom to explore my own ideas and the work of other women.

I am grateful to gender and women’s studies librarian Karla Strand for including my “utterly unique and important first novel” in her 2020 preview of feminist books for Ms. Magazine.

Subduction isn’t feminist because my Latinx character, an anthropologist named Claudia, does and thinks the right things. She doesn’t. Subduction is feminist because Claudia is complicated and contradictory, as is Maggie, the Makah tribal member who lets Claudia work with her family.

Their fraught relationship is too rare in published depictions of Latinas and indigenous womxn. To be read and seen for “themes of love, intrusion, loss, community and trust” is a comfort. To be among such excellent company will sweeten my tour.

Pa’lante.

(And yes, you can get free shipping on preorders from Red Hen Press, a much better deal than Amazon.)

 

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News, Uncategorized

Seattle Magazine Celebrates the New Hugo House

Many thanks to Seattle magazine’s Gwendolyn Elliott for sharing news of Hugo House’s grand opening in September. I will have an office and teach classes at the new building, located by Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill.

“The new Hugo will also house a writer’s salon, a 150-seat performance venue and staff offices to serve a student population that’s nearly doubled since 2012…The center’s growing student body will also be served by Hugo’s next writer-in-residence, Columbia City’s Kristen Millares Young, who changed course from an award-winning career in journalism (for outlets such as The New York Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Guardian and Time) to pursue the craft of personal essay, fiction and creative nonfiction. As she puts it, “current events forced me to get personal.” She now writes about feminism, cultural identity and justice, and her debut novel, which she describes as “a lyric retelling of the troubled history of encounter in the Americas,” is due to be published in 2020 by Red Hen Press.

“In a world that rewards cruelty,” Millares Young says, it’s places like Hugo House and a love for literature and stories that bring “us back to the hopes we formed before experience tried to teach us to dream smaller.”

Hugo House Grand Opening. Saturday, September 22. 5–10 p.m. Free. Hugo House, Capitol Hill, 1634 11th Ave.; 206.322.7030; hugohouse.org

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