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Kristen Millares Young: First Reading of 2021! [Virtual Event]

January 9, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

Free

Auntie’s Bookstore:

[Zoom Event] Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Kristen Millares Young, and Elissa Ball

Celebrating The Freezer Door and Subduction, with a special guest appearance by Elissa Ball 

Join us for an evening with Mattilda Berstein Sycamore and Kristen Millares Young. Sycamore and Young will discuss their books, The Freezer Door (longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award named one of the most anticipated books of 2020 in Oprah Magazine, The Millions and Lit Hub!) and Subduction (“highly recommended” by Luis Alberto Urrea), respectively. Their conversation will be preceded by a reading from Elissa Ball, author of The Punks Are Writing Love Songs.

The event is free to attend. Use this link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtf–rqDIuHdWT4W6cTXHX6LP0WmIL45Zy

 

About the writers: 

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of two nonfiction titles and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Her most recent novel, Sketchtasy, was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018. Her new book, The Freezer Door, was just longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award, and is one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020. Sycamore lives in Seattle.

Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, a Paris Review staff pick named a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards. A prize-winning journalist and essayist, Kristen served as 2018-2020 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle. Her essays, reviews and investigations appear in the Washington PostLiterary Hub, the Guardian, and the anthologies Latina Outsiders, Pie & Whiskey, and Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19.

Elissa Ball is the author of two humor books, a few zines, and a collection of poetry (The Punks Are Writing Love Songs, 2012). Originally from Yakima, WA, she now lives in Spokane. Elissa performs stand-up comedy, reads Tarot cards, and dotes on her dog. Her writing has appeared in The Inlander, Seattle Weekly, The Spokesman-Review, and The Yakima Herald-Republic. 

 

Praise for The Freezer Door 

“I really love Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s The Freezer Door. In a happy paradox common to great literature, it’s a book about not belonging that made me feel deeply less alone. I so admire its appetite to get down and dirty, to wield non sequitur with grace and power, to ponder the past while sticking with the present, to quest unceasingly. I stand deeply inspired and instructed by its great wit, candor, inventiveness, and majesty.”—Maggie Nelson

“[An] underline-every-sentence compendium of queer desire”—Oprah Magazin

The Freezer Door is a story about queerness, belonging, loneliness, desire, and the utter havoc of capitalism.”—Literary Hub

 

Praise for Subduction 

With dreamlike, salt-water-laced prose that feels born of the Salish Sea, Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction lyrically examines relationships strained and forged by place and belonging. Intelligently addressing womanhood, community, lust, and loss, this is a novel as deep as it is intoxicating, as intricate as it is powerful. Like Marilynne Robinson’s HousekeepingSubduction is a novel to be celebrated for both its poetry and wisdom.-Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra

Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction is the powerful debut novel from a writer that comes to us fully formed. This book is as unforgettable as it is timely, a story that keeps us riveted from beginning to end, written with abundant grace and lyric intensity. Beautiful, smart, and urgent. Read this book now.
Robert Lopez, author of Good PeopleKamby Bolongo Mean RiverPart of the World, All Back Full, and Asunder

Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction is a taut, atmospheric tale that gave me what I hope for in a novel: characters that I can care about, in a place that seems real, with stakes that really matter. This is an enormously impressive debut. I’ll eagerly await more from this writer.
–Steve Yarbrough: PEN/Faulkner finalist, winner of a Richard Wright Award and a California Book Award. The Unmade World, The Realm of Last ChancesThe End of CaliforniaPrisoners of War.

Event date:
Saturday, January 9, 2021 – 7:00pm