TFB Reading Series & Open Mic Feat: Kristen Millares Young

Join us for a queer-friendly, feminist reading series at The Feminist Bookstore in Mission Hills!

Our series celebrates diverse voices alongside a featured reader. Before or after the main reading, we have a generative workshop where attendees get a prompt and write for 10 minutes. This helps generate new material that attendees can share at the open mic portion. After that, the microphone is open for attendees to share up to 3 minutes of prose, poetry, or music in an inclusive, welcoming space. Tickets are free, and we invite all to participate and amplify their voices. Hosted by Jaded Ibis Press, a nonprofit feminist press dedicated to socially engaged literature by marginalized voices, this series promises an inspiring night of creativity and community.

Feature: Kristen Millares Young is a novelist, journalist, essayist, and the author of the memoir Desire Lines and the novel Subduction, both from Red Hen Press. Called “searching, generous, and unrelenting” by Melissa Febos, Desire Lines is a forensic investigation into the emotional topography of being a woman, a writer, and a mother.
Her novel Subduction was a staff pick of The Paris Review and deemed “whip-smart” by the Washington Post and “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year.
Her essays, book reviews, and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies No Contact, Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, and Alone Together. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize.
A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she is the editor of Seismic, a finalist for a 2021 Washington State Book Award. In 2025, Kristen was in residence for Storyknife Writers Retreat and Reykjavík Writes. She is a co-founder and former board chair of InvestigateWest.

Emcee: Elizabeth Earley: I am the author of the popular Substack series, Queering Reality, with 100,000 subscribers. My debut memoir in essays, Little Deaths All in a Row, Essays on Sex And Death is available now. I am also the author of two novels: A Map of Everything, a debut finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize; and Like Wings, Your Hands (Red Hen Press), winner of the Women’s Prose Prize (judged by Aimee Bender), the American Fiction Prize for Best LGBTQ novel, and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction by the Publishing Triangle, alongside Ocean Vuong and Jacqueline Woodson. In addition to two published works of fiction, I hold an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University-Los Angeles. My stories and essays have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, and Glimmer Train, among other publications. I was awarded the David Friedman Memorial Prize for Fiction and was twice a finalist for the AWP New Journals Award. I have received two Pushcart nominations and was a finalist for the 2011 Bakeless Literary Prize for Fiction. I am currently the owner of The Feminist Bookstore and president of Jaded Ibis Press, a nonprofit feminist press committed to publishing socially engaged literature.