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. In 2020, Subduction won Nautilus and IPPY awards. Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Subduction was 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 called it one of “the year’s best books.”

Kristen sings with Last of the RedHot Mamas, a blues band releasing their first album in April 2024. She was the 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer for Seattle University and the University of Washington Bothell MFA. Kristen reviews books for the Washington Post. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she joined the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau to offer free bilingual writing workshops until 2025. 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, and Alone Together, winner of a 2021 Washington State Book Award.

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 to serve vulnerable peoples 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. @kristenmillares