DeShara is a queer, Black poet and visual artist. She co-founded Daughter’s Tongue (an all-women writing collective), worked as the Creative Director of Workshops at Winter Tangerine, and is a former member of the Youth Speaks Collective. She received her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts and fellowships from Callaloo, the Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door. In 2021, she was nominated for “Best of the Net.” She has published poems in Apogee Lit, Voicemail Poems, Tinderbox Journal, The Texas Review, and elsewhere. She has also been featured on Button Poetry’s YouTube platform and has performed at the likes of Spotify, Yahoo, and Pinterest
Products
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Chronicles of Ori with Harmonia Rosales - November 21 @ 7PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Chronicles of Ori with Harmonia Rosales - November 21 @ 7PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Chronicles of Ori with Harmonia Rosales - November 21 @ 7PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Chronicles of Ori with Harmonia Rosales!
EVENT DEETS
When: Friday, November 21 @ 7PM
Where: Kindred Stories(2310 Elgin St, Unity 2, Houston, TX 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From the acclaimed fine artist Harmonia Rosales, a sweeping retelling of African myth illustrated throughout with Rosales’s spectacular paintings.
In Chronicles of Ori, her debut book, Harmonia Rosales retells the African myths she has long treasured, crafting an enthralling epic that spans the birth of the universe to the modern world of colonialism and resistance. She writes of the powerful, temperamental deities called the Orishas; of the founding of Yorubaland by the shrewd leader Oduduwa; of the young heroine Eve, born in a time of violence and despair, who would help her people regain their past splendor; and of shimmering serpents and monstrous shadows who stalk the lands of mortals. At the center of these linked tales is the bond, sometimes fraying, between the Orishas and the humans who worship them. It was the Orishas who made humans, and who gave them their most precious resource: their Oris, or destinies. Vividly brought to life by Rosales’s artwork, Chronicles of Ori will enlighten and delight readers for years to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harmonia Rosales is a Chicago-born, Afro-Cuban American artist and author whose work centers the visibility and empowerment of Black women in Western art. Growing up visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosales was captivated by Renaissance painting—but years later, her daughter’s simple observation that “they don’t look like me” exposed the exclusion at the heart of that tradition.
That moment sparked Rosales’s artistic journey: reimagining Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces with Black protagonists and centering West African spirituality. Since 2017, her work has visualized the Orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition, and explored the survival of their stories across the Middle Passage. With bold, uncompromising imagery and prose, Rosales challenges Eurocentric ideals of beauty, power, and divinity, reshaping both art history and cultural consciousness.
Rosales has previously been the subject of exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; the Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; the Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; the Wright Museum, Detroit MI, among others. Her work is held by numerous public and private collections across the United States, including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, Washington D.C.; Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, and others.
Her debut novel, CHRONICLES OF ORI: An African Epic, will be available beginning October 14, 2025; it is published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Janice Bond is a visionary cultural strategist, curator, and multidisciplinary leader whose work operates at the nexus of art, architecture, and experiential design. Her practice bridges continents and disciplines, reshaping how communities, institutions, and markets engage with art, space, and storytelling. From Texas to Japan, Europe, and West Africa, her work reveals the deep connections between culture, consciousness, and place while advancing a philosophy rooted in the emotional and spatial intelligence of design.
As Executive Director of the Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG), one of the nation’s most historic public art organizations, Bond leads a new era of innovation and access. She is expanding CPAG’s legacy through immersive installations, technology integration, and strategic partnerships that unite artists, architects, and civic leaders. As CEO and Chief Curator of Bond Cultural Architects, she has guided landmark projects across sectors, from citywide public art programs to bespoke cultural initiatives for luxury brands. Her previous leadership roles include Deputy Director at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Director of Music and Social Programming at Kimpton Hotels, and International Director of Civic Art and Immersive Experiences at SEISMIQUE, where she pioneered multisensory storytelling in contemporary art.
As both artist and producer, Bond’s practice explores sacred geometry, sound, and the metaphysics of design, mapping the invisible relationships between form and human experience. Through her firms PUBLIC CANVAS, BOND CONTEMPORARY, and ART IS BOND, she continues to develop art-centered strategies and exhibitions that promote healing, equity, and cultural exchange. Her vision is defined by an enduring belief that art has the power to transform spaces, deepen understanding, and elevate the collective imagination. - IRL AUTHOR TALK: City Summer, Country Summer with Kiese Laymon - April 6 @ 2PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: City Summer, Country Summer with Kiese Laymon - April 6 @ 2PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: City Summer, Country Summer with Kiese Laymon - April 6 @ 2PM
Kiese Laymon
Sold outCelebrate the release of City Summer, Country Summer with Kiese Laymon!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, April 6 @ 2PM
Where: 2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming
ABOUT THE BOOK
A lyrical picture book from the award-winning author of Heavy, about three Black boys who form a deep connection during a transformative summer trip down South to visit family.
On the ground of that garden, covered in vegetables and dirt, coated in laughter, I want to say that the Mississippi and New York in our Black boy bodies were indistinguishable.
Three Black boys spend one special summer exploring the Mississippi woods and woulds and coulds of sharing the kind of freeing friendship that is love.
Watched over and given space to discover by Grandmama and Mama Lara, New York, Country, and little C find camaraderie in their contrasts and all the unspoken things between them while playing games of marco polo in the thick garden and sledding on cardboard by the underpass.
With text brimming with love by award-winning author Kiese Laymon and deeply evocative illustrations by Ashley Franklin, City Summer, Country Summer illuminates the tenuous and tender bonds of friendship Black boys forge with one another.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. He is the co-host of Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore - May 8 @ 7PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore - May 8 @ 7PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore - May 8 @ 7PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, May 8 @ 7PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming
ABOUT THE BOOK
Stop People-Pleasing and Start Setting Healthier Boundaries Now
Do you feel resentful because you didn’t speak up? Do find yourself saying yes when you really mean no, only to burn out later? Or maybe frustration builds, leading to blowups that push people away? In Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries, licensed psychotherapist Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore addresses the struggles many face when they can’t express their needs, often resorting to either giving in or losing control.
This book provides essential tools to break free from these patterns and communicate with clarity and confidence. Learn how to set firm, healthy boundaries without guilt and honor yourself without fear of conflict. Tackling either people-pleasing or explosive reactions, Dr. Gilmore’s practical guidance will help you build and maintain fulfilling relationships without compromising your well-being.
Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries includes:
* Verbal and nonverbal communication skills and activities. Attain lifelong skill sets to build assertiveness, confidence, and self-awareness.
* Real-life dialogue scripts. Practice setting and asserting boundaries at your own pace while finding your communication style.
* Easy implementation in two parts. Learn core communication skills in the first part of the book, and then apply these skills in the second part, which features common scenarios where boundaries are challenged in everyday life, relaABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore is a licensed therapist, educator, consultant, writer, and speaker. She inspires those she works with to intentionally integrate self-care and healthy boundaries in their daily lives and is an advocate for ending the stigma related to seeking therapy. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Prairie View A&M University and a doctorate in counselor education from Texas Southern University. Her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy was earned at Fuller Theological Seminary. She resides in Houston, Texas.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Kandice Ewing is a lifelong Houston resident and a dedicated co-leader at the Fellowship of Love Church for over 20 years. Recently, Kandice earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Houston Christian University and is now a Licensed Professional Counselor-Associate. Believing that therapy is her true calling, Kandice is committed to supporting individuals, groups, and couples experiencing mental distress, emotional dysregulation, and life stressors.
With expertise in areas such as grief and loss, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, spiritual struggles, relationships, boundaries, assertiveness, and self-esteem, Kandice takes an eclectic therapeutic approach and tailors’ treatment to meet each client's unique needs.
Passionate about guiding others on their wellness journey, Kandice is dedicated to fostering healing and personal growth in a compassionate and supportive environment.
- IRL Author Talk: Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System with Alan Dettlaff
![IRL Author Talk: Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System with Alan Dettlaff]()
IRL Author Talk: Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System with Alan Dettlaff
from $0.00In Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System, Alan J. Dettlaff presents a call to abolish the American child welfare system due to the harm and destruction it causes Black families. Dettlaff traces the origins of the modern child welfare system, which emerged following the abolition of slavery, to demonstrate that the harm and oppression that result from child welfare intervention are not the result of "unintended consequences" but rather are the clear intents of the system and the foreseeable results of the policies that have been put in place over decades.
By tracing the history of family separations in the United States since the era of slavery, Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System demonstrates that the intended outcomes of those separations--the subjugation of Black Americans and the maintenance of white supremacy--are the same intended outcomes of the family separations done today. What distinguishes contemporary family separations from those that occurred during slavery is that today's separations occur under a facade of benevolence, a myth that has been perpetuated over decades that family separations are necessary to "save" the most vulnerable children.
Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System presents evidence of the vast harms that result from family separations to make a case that the child welfare system is beyond reform. Rather, the only solution to ending these harms is complete abolition of this system and a fundamental reimagining of the way society cares for children, families, and communities. - IRL Author Talk: D'Vaughn & Kris Plan a Wedding with Chencia Higgins & Kadie Henderson-March 18 @ 7:00 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: D'Vaughn & Kris Plan a Wedding with Chencia Higgins & Kadie Henderson-March 18 @ 7:00 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: D'Vaughn & Kris Plan a Wedding with Chencia Higgins & Kadie Henderson-March 18 @ 7:00 PM CST
Sold outJoin us as we celebrate author, Chenicia Higgins & the release of D'Vaughn & Kris Plan a Wedding!
Event Deets:
When: Friday, March 18 at 7:00 pm CST
Where: Project Row Houses Community Gallery - 2521 Holman Street, Houston, TX 77004
How: Limited in-person tickets are available. You have the option to grab a ticket for free or purchase the book and ticket. Only books purchased at the event will be eligible to be signed by the author.
We hope to see you there!
About the Book
D’Vaughn and Kris have six weeks to plan their dream wedding.
Their whole relationship is fake.
Instant I Do could be Kris Zavala’s big break. She’s right on the cusp of really making it as an influencer, so a stint on reality TV is the perfect chance to elevate her brand. And $100,000 wouldn’t hurt, either.
D’Vaughn Miller is just trying to break out of her shell. She’s sort of neglected to come out to her mom for years, so a big splashy fake wedding is just the excuse she needs.
All they have to do is convince their friends and family they’re getting married in six weeks. If anyone guesses they’re not for real, they’re out. Selling their chemistry on camera is surprisingly easy, and it’s still there when no one else is watching, which is an unexpected bonus. Winning this competition is going to be a piece of wedding cake.
But each week of the competition brings new challenges, and soon the prize money’s not the only thing at stake. A reality show isn’t the best place to create a solid foundation, and their fake wedding might just derail their relationship before it even startsAbout the Author
Chencia Higgins hails from the big city of Houston in the greatest state of Texas. Writing has been her my passion since she was a young girl, when her subject matter were visions of middle school drama with her group of girlfriends.
She entered the world of publishing in May 2016 with an erotic novella that set the stage for a career in which she would craft engaging tales of Black women being loved up on. She continues to write for women who love to read but are tired of never seeing themselves in the story.
Higgins proud to be a part of an indie and self-published author community
When she's not writing, you can find her reading a book (or two, or three), saving recipes that she'll never make on Pinterest, and traveling as much as possible with her family.
About the Moderator
Hailin and Hollin, Kadiedre Henderson is a Black, Queer, Lesbian, and Houston native. She is most precious about the care she brings to herself and others. Through deep listening to the world and stars, Kadie extends care by providing space for folks to tell their own stories. A lover of stories and storyteller at heart, Kadie started working with books back in 2019 and hasn't left since. A self-proclaimed optimist, Kadie loves Queer YA, Romance, Biographies, and Magic! She is especially excited by stories that speak to navigating grief, trauma, and Black Femme Eroticism. They are so happy to be a team member of the Kindred Stories staff.
- IRL Author Talk: Dark Days with Roger Reeves: Fugitive Essays - August 4 at 7PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Dark Days with Roger Reeves: Fugitive Essays - August 4 at 7PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Dark Days with Roger Reeves: Fugitive Essays - August 4 at 7PM CST
from $0.00Come celebrate the new essay collection, Dark Days: Fugitive Essays with National Book Award winner, Roger Reeves!
EVENT DEETS
When: Friday, August 4 at 7 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden
How: RSVP ONLY to save your seat or RSVP with ticket to support the author or programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A crucial book that calls for community, solidarity, and joy, even in—especially in—these dark days
In his debut work of nonfiction, award-winning poet Roger Reeves finds new meaning in silence, protest, fugitivity, freedom, and ecstasy. Braiding memoir, theory, and criticism, Reeves juxtaposes the images of an opera singer breaking the state-mandated silence curfew by singing out into the streets of Santiago, Chile, and a father teaching his daughter to laugh out loud at the planes dropping bombs on them in Aleppo, Syria. He describes the history of the hush harbor—places where enslaved people could steal away to find silence and court ecstasy, to the side of their impossible conditions. In other essays, Reeves highlights a chapter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to locate common purpose between Black and Indigenous peoples; he visits the realities of enslaved people on McLeod Plantation, where some of the descendants of those formerly enslaved lived into the 1990s; and he explores his own family history, his learning to read closely through the Pentecostal church tradition, and his passing on of reading as a pleasure, freedom, and solace to his daughter, who is frightened the police will gun them down.
Together, these groundbreaking essays build a profound vision for how to see and experience the world in our present moment, and how to strive toward an alternative existence in intentional community underground. “The peace we fight and search for,” Reeves writes, “begins and ends with being still.”ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROGER REEVES is the author of the poetry collections King Me and Best Barbarian. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2015 Whiting Award, and Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University. His essays and poems have appeared in Poetry, the New Yorker, Granta, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Stevens is a Writer, Organizer, and Archivist. As part of the Kindred Stories family he is the Operations & Community Facilitator, and part-time Adjunct Professor. Stevens' current work and concentration is centered around his social-political analysis and its intersections with the arts, community, and revolutionary politics. - IRL AUTHOR TALK: Dear Manny with Nic Stone - March 4 @ 7 PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Dear Manny with Nic Stone - March 4 @ 7 PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Dear Manny with Nic Stone - March 4 @ 7 PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Dear Manny with Nic Stone!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, March 4 @ 7PM
Where: The Eldorado Ballroom -The Hogan Brown Gallery (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming
ABOUT THE BOOK
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin comes the thrilling final installment of the series, set in college. Jared (white, Justyce's roommate, woke) is running for Junior class president. With his antiracism platform, he's a shoo-in. But he's up against the new girl, Dylan. Will Jared have to choose between his head and his heart?
Jared Peter Christensen is running for president (of the Junior Class Council at his university, but still). His platform is solid—built on increased equity and inclusion in all sectors of campus life—and he’s got a good chance of beating the deeply conservative business major he’s running against.
But then a transfer student enters the race and calls Jared out for his big-talk/little-action way of moving. But what’s the right way to bring about change? As the campaign heats up, feelings are caught, and juicy secrets come to light, and Jared writes letters to his deceased friend Manny, hoping to make sense of his confusion. What’s a white boy to do when love and politics collide?
New York Times bestselling author Nic Stone writes from a new perspective in this exciting final chapter of the Dear Martin series that examines privilege, love, and our political climate.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nic Stone is the author of many novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Dear Martin and its New York Times bestselling sequel, Dear Justyce. She also penned the young adult titles Odd One Out, an NPR Best Book and an ALA Rainbow Book Top Ten, Jackpot, the YALSA Quick Pick Selection that takes a searing look at economic inequality, and Chaos Theory, a Southern Book Prize finalist and a YALSA Best Fiction Book for Young Adults Reading List selection. Her middle-grade novels include Clean Getaway, a New York Times bestseller, and Fast Pitch, a YALSA Quick Pick Selection. Nic lives in Atlanta and will continue to write books that ruffle feathers
ABOUT CONVERSATION PARTNER
Britt Hawthorne is a New York Times bestselling author, educator, and advocate for racial justice. Her book Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide has been widely recognized as an essential resource for parents committed to fostering inclusivity and justice. She continues to educate and inspire through her forthcoming children's book, Main Street: A Story of Redlining, co-authored with Tiffany Jewell. This powerful story introduces young readers to the history of redlining—a discriminatory housing practice that denied homeownership opportunities to communities of color—helping children understand systemic inequality in an accessible and meaningful way.
Britt’s impactful work has been featured by PBS, Essence magazine, NPR, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Britt is based in Houston, Texas, and shares her home with her two teenagers and a lively dog named Butter. She remains dedicated to empowering families and educators by leading transformative conversations, sipping coffee, indulging in sweets, or sneaking in a well-earned nap. Learn more about her on Instagram @britthawthorne or at britthawthorne.com.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Design Against Racism with Omari Souza - October 9 @ 7 PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Design Against Racism with Omari Souza - October 9 @ 7 PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Design Against Racism with Omari Souza - October 9 @ 7 PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Design Against Racism : Creating Work That Transforms Communities with Omari Souza!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, October 9 @ 7PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.
*Copies of Design Against Racism that were not purchased at Kindred Stories will not be permitted at the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A historical and philosophical exploration of the impact of design on underserved communities, examining the field’s shortcomings as well as its potential to create positive change. Through essays that delve into history and practice, and case studies that demonstrate practical strategies, Design Against Racism explores how designers of all disciplines can address, through their work, the legacies of racism and oppression.
Design profoundly influences culture. The heart of this book is its powerful blend of essays on design history, illustrated case studies, and discussions of practical methods to approach design work, adapted from the restorative justice movement. It explores how design as a professional practice and academic discipline directly affects historically excluded communities, offering frameworks and examples that foster collective improvement.
Topics from author Omari Souza, founder of the annual State of Black Design conference, and contributing design professionals include:
- Unveiling the White Gaze: The Narrative of Whiteness and Colonial Nostalgia
- Language as a Tool for Marginalization—and Resistance
- Hip-Hop Architecture: Transforming Spaces through Culture and Innovation
- Afrofuturism as a Design Strategy
- Whose Knowledge Is It? Reclaiming Histories, Narratives, and the Plurality of Knowledge
- Nonhierarchical Engagement with Communities—Anti-Racist Design Community Pop-Up
This is a critique of design and a practical handbook that will teach designers and educators how a restorative justice approach can transform their design practice to counteract and fight racism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Omari Souza is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent who was raised in the Bronx, NY. He is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the University of North Texas and organizer of the State of Black Design conference. He received his BFA in Digital Media from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA in Design from Kent State University.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Tracey L. Moore is an Associate Professor and Interim Director of the Digital Media Arts Program at Prairie View A&M University. She holds a BA in Advertising Art from Prairie View and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston. Moore teaches upper-division courses, including Layout, Typography, and Branding, and has developed the DesignView Media Center, a student-run studio offering graphic design services and real-world experience for Digital Media Arts majors. One of her studio projects was featured in Anthology of Blackness: State of Black Design, and a second project won the Texas Association of Schools of Art 2024 Excellence in the Field Award.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Devils Kill Devils with Johnny Compton- Date @ 7:30pm
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Devils Kill Devils with Johnny Compton- Date @ 7:30pm]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Devils Kill Devils with Johnny Compton- Date @ 7:30pm
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Devils Kill Devils with Johnny Compton!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Where: 2304 Stuart St.
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your book or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming*
ABOUT THE BOOK
When all hell breaks loose, you need a devil on your side
Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever…
When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive.
ABOUT THE AUTHORJOHNNY COMPTON's short stories have appeared in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast and many other markets. He is an HWA member and creator and host of the podcast Healthy Fears. He is the author of The Spite House.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Rhonda Jackson Garcia, AKA RJ Joseph, is an award winning, Stoker Award™ and Shirley Jackson Award nominated, Texas based academic and creative writer/professor/editor whose writing regularly focuses on the intersections of gender and race in the horror and romance genres and popular culture. She has had works published in various applauded venues. Rhonda is also an instructor at The Speculative Fiction Academy and the co-host of the Genre Blackademia podcast. She is also working with Raw Dog Screaming Press, editing a new novella line, The Selected Papers for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena.
- IRL Author Talk: Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? with Jay Ellis + Kendrick Sampson - August 6 @ 7 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? with Jay Ellis + Kendrick Sampson - August 6 @ 7 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? with Jay Ellis + Kendrick Sampson - August 6 @ 7 PM CST
Sold outCelebrate the release of Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? with Jay Ellis!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 @ 7PM (Doors Open at 6PM)
Where: STAGES (800 Rosine St, HTX, 77019)
How: Grab your ticket today! Each ticket come with a signed copy of Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (Or Just Me)?: Adventures of Boyhood. Books will be available for pick up at the event.
*NO REFUNDS*
ABOUT THE BOOK
What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, military brat hustling school-to-school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from every child's favorite co-conspirator—their imaginary best friend. Born in the perfect storm of especially ferocious rain and a sugar-fueled imagination, Mikey, his imaginary best friend, steps in to figuratively hold Jay's hand through various youthful shenanigans.
A testament to the importance of imagination, trusting oneself, and making space for your creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend or Just Me? is a story of a 90s kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate everything from parallel pop culture universes, like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews, to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides him through greater tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target driveby and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license.
As imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking within yourself for guidance to some of life’s biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homie.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Sumter, South Carolina, to a military family, Jay Ellis spent his childhood inventing new personas for every town he landed in. Too many to count. After college, he realized the NBA wasn’t good enough for him and he didn’t want to crush other players’ dreams as he dominated the league so he decided to take his one-man show to Hollywood, where he got his start on BET’s The Game. Now an accomplished actor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, Ellis is best known for his role as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure, for which he won an NAACP Image Award. He appeared alongside Tom Cruise, flying jets through the skies, in the Oscar-nominated film in Top Gun: Maverick. When he’s not on set filming he spends the majority of his days cleaning up the messes that his daughter’s imaginary friend “Jack” made. Karma.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Kendrick Sampson is an actor, producer and activist who leverages his platform and storytelling to shift culture for good.
Growing up in Houston and Missouri aka “Mo City”, Texas, Kendrick Sampson was dropped into a unique and deeply rooted culture of music and art.
His most acclaimed and notable characters from "Nathan" on HBO's Emmy-nominated comedy series, Insecure, to "Ethan" in Prime’s popular romantic comedy Something from Tiffany’s and his personal favorite, the surrealist satire I am a Virgo from Boots Riley - Kendrick has been achieving his lifelong goal of shifting culture through storytelling and uplifting nuanced, diverse, and authentic portrayals of Black men.
He uses his platform to amplify transformational grassroots work in intersectional mental health justice, sexual health and liberation and fighting state violence. Kendrick co-founded BLD PWR which includes a production company and social impact (501c3) arm whose mission is to “Reimagine and Realize the liberated future we know our people deserve” by organizing Hollywood and shifting the culture toward nourishing and protecting nuanced Black, Indigenous, and marginalized leaders and everyday people, especially our storytellers and their stories.
- IRL Author Talk: Do the Work with W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz- August 17 @ 7:00 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Do the Work with W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz- August 17 @ 7:00 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Do the Work with W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz- August 17 @ 7:00 PM CST
Sold outJoin us an interactive conversation surrounding Do The Work by W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz.
Event DEETS:
When: August 17, 2022 at 7:00 PM
Where: MATCH (3400 Main Street, HTX 77002)
How: Limited in person seating is available. Every ticket will include a signed copy of Do the Work!
About the Book
Do the Work! is a hands-on workbook for anyone overwhelmed by racial injustice, who feels shocked by all the American histories they never learned, and who keeps asking the question “what can I DOOOOOO?!” Packed with humorous, thought-provoking activities—all are rooted in history and contemporary social justice concepts—the book helps readers move from "What can I do?" to... you know... actually doing the work.
About the Authors
W. KAMAU BELL is a dad, husband, and comedian. He directed and executive-produced the four-part Showtime documentary We Need To Talk About Cosby, which premiered at Sundance. He famously met with the KKK on his Emmy-Award-winning CNN docu-series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, where he serves as host and executive producer. He has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Conan, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, CBS Mornings, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Comedy Central, HBO, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, WTF with Marc Maron, The Breakfast Club, and This American Life. He has two stand-up comedy specials, Private School Negro (Netflix) and Semi-Prominent Negro (Showtime). Kamau’s writing has been featured in Time, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, CNN.com, Salon, and The LA Review of Books. Kamau’s first book has an easy-to-remember title, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian. He is the ACLU Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice and serves on the board of directors of Donors Choose and the advisory board of Hollaback!KATE SCHATZ is the New York Times bestselling author of Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, Rad American History A-Z, and the illustrated journal My Rad Life. She’s a writer, public speaker, educator, and left-handed vegetarian Bay Area-born-and-bred queer feminist activist mama. Kate is also a political organizer and frequent public speaker. She’s the co-founder of Solidarity Sundays, a nationwide network of over 200 feminist activist groups. She founded the organization in January 2016 with a friend and began by holding a series of monthly “activist house parties” aimed at showing women how to take meaningful, coordinated political action. After the 2016 election, the group grew from one chapter with 50 members to more than 200 chapters with 20,000+ members. As an educator, Kate has worked with a wide range of age groups for over 15 years. She taught Women’s Studies, Literature, and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State, Rhode Island College, and Brown University. And she is the former Chair of the School of Literary Arts at Oakland School for the Arts, where she taught fiction, poetry, and journalism to 9th-12th graders for many years. Kate received her MFA in Fiction from Brown University, and a double BA in Women’s Studies/Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz. She lives with her family on the island of Alameda. - IRL AUTHOR TALK: Firstborn Girls with Bernice McFadden - April 10 @ 7 PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Firstborn Girls with Bernice McFadden - April 10 @ 7 PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Firstborn Girls with Bernice McFadden - April 10 @ 7 PM
Sold outCelebrate award winning author, Bernice McFadden's memoir, Firstborn Girls!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, April 10 @ 7 PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to ensure your seat an a copy of Firstborn Girls!
There are limited free RSVP ONLY tickets so please make sure that you can make it.
Please note that copies of Firstborn Girls purchased from other retailers will not be allowed in the venue.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.
Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.
A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, The Warmest December, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, Glorious, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and Praise Song for the Butterflies (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an award-winning writer, director, performer, critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, TX. Praised by the NY Times as an artist who “defies categorization”, her genre-bending works span from stage to page, and everything in between. She is the author of Newsworthy (Bloomsday Literary, 2019) which was translated into German (Berichtenswert, Elif Verlag, 2020), Black Chameleon (Henry Holt, 2023), and an upcoming children's book, Hush Hush Hurricane (Kokila Books, 2025). Honored as part of Houston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 class, she has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN's Andscape, to name a few.She has penned stage works including Marian's Song (Houston Grand Opera), The Forest of Secrets (National Sawdust), Atlanta: 1906 (Atlanta Opera) & On My Mind (Opera Theater St. Louis). Serving as Playwright/Director, she produced The World's Intermission, commissioned by Performing Arts Houston (Jones Hall), which has since been adapted for film, and Plumshuga: The Rise of Lauren Anderson, a choreopoem (Stages Theater) which made the cover of the NYT Culture section.Her recent memoir, Black Chameleon examines Black womanhood through afrofuturistic mythology which Mouton later adapted into a storybook opera titled (Lula, the Mighty Griot, HGO) and an independent short film (Headache & Heartthrob). A former Resident Artist with the American Lyric Theater, Rice University, and the Houston Museum of African American Culture, her upcoming projects will debut at The Kennedy Center and American Lyric Theater. She resides in Houston, TX. - IRL Author Talk: Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Mitchell S. Jackson & Tay Butler-September 13 at 7PM CT
![IRL Author Talk: Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Mitchell S. Jackson & Tay Butler-September 13 at 7PM CT]()
IRL Author Talk: Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Mitchell S. Jackson & Tay Butler-September 13 at 7PM CT
from $0.00Pull up in your best to celebrate Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Pulitzer winning author, Michell S. Jackson and one of our favorite artist/community members, Tay Butler.
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 7PM
Where: The Reading Room HTX (401 Franklin Street, 77201)
How: RSVP to grab your free ticket or RSVP book to reserve your seat and your copy of the book while supporting our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Equal parts stunning, photo-rich lookbook, and cultural commentary, Fly is the story of the extraordinary intersection of high fashion and basketball. Each chapter explores the style of an era and the cultural influences that shaped it: The league’s inception in 1949, pre-Civil Rights Movement, when the NBA was mostly comprised of white players who wore suits and skinny ties. The years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the birth of funk and R&B when basketball fashion got flashier (think Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain wearing fur coats and big hats). The Michael Jordan era of the 1980s and 1990s, with its oversize suits. The epic Iverson/Hip-Hop years of the late 1990s and early 2000s. And now to today, a time defined not only by social media and high fashion’s birthing of the tunnel walk (think LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Russell Westbrook), but one in which athletes are idealized as style icons and activists, figures who inspire conversations beyond how they play and what they wear.ABOUT THE AUTHORMitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson’s debut novel, The Residue Years, won a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His essay collection Survival Math was named a best book of 2019 by fifteen publications. Jackson’s other honors include fellowships, grants, and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, PEN America, and TED. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Time, and Esquire, as well as in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, the Paris Review, the Guardian, and elsewhere. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Esquire. He holds the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professorship in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
ABOUT THE INTERLOCUTOR
Tay Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer and educator based in Houston, Texas. He received his MFA from the University of Arkansas' Photography and Studio Art Program, BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and everything else from Milwaukee, MN. After retiring from the US Army and abandoning a middle-class engineering career to search for purpose, Butler reignited a rich appreciation for Black history and a deep obsession with the Black archive. Using past and present images to create a historically-layered body of work, Tay reorients cultural material from the ever-growing Black experience.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Forged By Blood with Ehigbor Okosun-August 11 at 7:30 PM CST
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Forged By Blood with Ehigbor Okosun-August 11 at 7:30 PM CST]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Forged By Blood with Ehigbor Okosun-August 11 at 7:30 PM CST
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Forged by Blood, a Nigerian inspired fantasy novel with debut author, Ehigbor Okosun!
ABOUT THE EVENT
When: Friday, August 11th at 7:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Garden
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the midst of an authoritarian regime and political invasion, Dèmi just wants to survive: to avoid the suspicion of the nonmagical Ajes who occupy her ancestral homeland of Ifé; to escape King Sorenson’s brutal genocide of her people, the darker skinned, magic wielding Oluso; and to live peacefully with her secretive mother while learning to control the terrifying blood magic that is her birthright.
But when Dèmi’s misplaced trust costs her mother’s life, survival gives way to vengeance. She bides her time until the devious Lord Ekwensi grants her the perfect opportunity—kidnap the Aje prince, Jonas, and bargain with his life to save the remaining Oluso. With the help of her reckless childhood friend Colin, Dèmi succeeds, but discovers that she and Jonas share more than deadly secrets; every moment tangles them further in a forbidden, unmistakable attraction, much to Colin’s—and Dèmi’s—distress
The kidnapping is now a joint mission: to return to the King, help get Lord Ekwensi on the council, and bolster the voice of the Oluso in a system designed to silence them. But the way is dangerous, Dèmi’s magic is growing yet uncertain, and she’s not sure if she can trust the two men at her side.
A tale of rebellion and redemption, race and class, love and trust and betrayal, Forged by Blood is epic fantasy at its finest, from an enthusiastic, emerging voice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ehigbor Okosun is an Austin-based author who writes speculative fiction for adult and young adult audiences. A British private school survivor turned Nigerian American immigrant, she hopes to do justice to the myths and traditions she was steeped in, and to honor her large, multiracial, and multiethnic family. She is a graduate of the University of Texas with degrees in Plan II Honors, neurolinguistics, and English, as well as chemistry and premedical studies, and was recently named a Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award finalist. When she’s not reading, you can catch her bullet journaling and baking.ABOUT THE MODERATORJ. Elle is the New York Times bestselling author of young adult and middle-grade fantasy fiction and a 2022 NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth and Teens. Her work is being translated and distributed in over fifteen countries. The former educator credits her nomadic lifestyle and humble inner-city beginnings as inspiration for her novels. When she’s not writing, Elle can be found on the hunt for desserts without chocolate, looking for any excuse to get dressed up, and road-tripping her way across the country with her family of six plus four pets in tow.
- IRL Author Talk: Gabrielle Union discusses You Got Anything Stronger? - September 17at 7:00 PM CST (TICKETS VIA EVENTBRITE)
![IRL Author Talk: Gabrielle Union discusses You Got Anything Stronger? - September 17at 7:00 PM CST (TICKETS VIA EVENTBRITE)]()
IRL Author Talk: Gabrielle Union discusses You Got Anything Stronger? - September 17at 7:00 PM CST (TICKETS VIA EVENTBRITE)
Sold outJoin us for a girl's night out with Gabrielle Union as she discusses her newest book, You Got Anything Stronger?
Please use the Eventbrite link above to secure your ticket for this event!
Event Details:
When: Friday, September 17 at 7:00 PM CST
Where: The Fountain of Praise, 13950 Hillcroft Ave, Houston, TX 77085
How: Ticket required for entry. Every ticket includes a copy of Gabrielle Union’s book, You Got Anything Stronger?, which will be available for pick-up when checking in at the venue.
Cost: $35 via Eventbrite (includes book)
We hope to see you there!
About the Book:
Over the years Gabrielle Union has been a tireless advocate for the marginalized and the victimized, and fans around the world have watched her both on and off-screen stand up to and speak out against injustice, in its myriad forms.
With her newest book, You Got Anything Stronger?, Gabrielle is at her most vulnerable. Life happens with all its plot twists, and Gabrielle is opening up about everything from her surrogacy journey to navigating married life to aging and leveling up in your career. This will be a memorable evening of conversation that will leave guests feeling empowered and inspired.
About the Author:
Gabrielle Union is an actress, executive producer, activist, best-selling author and most recently, a Time100 cover honoree. Union formed her production shingle “I’ll Have Another” in 2018 with the goal of telling stories that center marginalized communities with their specific point of views in an authentic manner. In August of 2020, she relaunched her haircare brand “Flawless by Gabrielle Union” for women with textured hair. The new and improved collection includes an array of options, affordably priced between $4 - $10, that empowers consumers to customize a regimen specific to their texture and style preferences. Prior to relaunching Flawless, Union learned of the disparities in the food space and joined Bitsy's as a cofounder with the goal of making healthy, allergen-friendly, school-safe snacks that are accessible and affordable for all families regardless of their socioeconomic or geographical status. Her first book, We’re Going To Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated and True, was released in 2017 and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. Union serves as a leader and advocate for inclusion in the entertainment industry. She is also a champion of breast health and combating sexual violence.
Event guidelines subject to change.
- IRL Author Talk: Gather Me with Glory Edim - November 3 @ 4PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Gather Me with Glory Edim - November 3 @ 4PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Gather Me with Glory Edim - November 3 @ 4PM CST
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Gather Me: A Memoir In Praise of the Books That Saved Me with Glory Edim!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, November 3 @ 4PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: Get your ticket here (all tickets include a copy of Gather Me)!
ABOUT THE BOOK
An inspiring memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison
For Glory Edim, that "friend of my mind" is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty eventually reaching a community of half a million other readers. But her love of books stretches far back.
When Edim's father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, she and her brothers were left with a single mother and little money, often finding a safe space at their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older, she discovered authors and ideas she wasn't being taught in class. In dorm rooms and airplanes and on subway rides, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni through children's poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison while attending Morrison's alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others helped her to value herself: to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
Gather Me is a glowing testament to the power of representation and the lasting impact of literature to gather our disparate parts and put them back together.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glory Edim is a literary tastemaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for diverse voices in literature. In 2015, she founded Well-Read Black Girl (WRBG), an online platform and book club dedicated to celebrating the works of Black women authors and creating a supportive online community for readers. Under Glory's leadership, WRBG has grown into a non-profit organization, hosting events, book festivals, and author conversations that highlight the richness and diversity of Black literature. Her efforts have earned her accolades such as the 2017 Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times and the Madam C.J. Walker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. As an author herself, Glory has contributed to the literary landscape with her best-selling anthologies Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, and On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Wale is a licensed mental health therapist and a passionate reader who uses her platform (@theehottgirlbooks) to dive deep into powerfully emotional stories written by BIPOC authors. Her love for reading and mental health fosters a passionate approach to her work both online and in the therapy room. When she is not immersed in the literary world, you can find her watching the real housewives or building an elaborate Lego set.
- IRL Author Talk: God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer with Joseph Earl Thomas - June 25 @ 7:30 PM
![IRL Author Talk: God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer with Joseph Earl Thomas - June 25 @ 7:30 PM]()
IRL Author Talk: God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer with Joseph Earl Thomas - June 25 @ 7:30 PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer with Joseph Earl Thomas!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, June 25 @ 7:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat and RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store.
ABOUT THE BOOK
After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.
Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories, Leviathan Beach, among other oddities.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Joshua Burton is a poet and educator from Houston, TX and received his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. He is a 2019 Tin House Winter Workshop Scholar, 2019 Juniper Summer Writing Institute scholarship winner, 2019 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics fellowship finalist, received the Honorable Mention for the 2018 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize, 2020 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing finalist, and a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant recipient. His work can be found in Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Conduit, TriQuarterly, Black Warrior Review, Grist, and Indiana Review. His chapbook Fracture Anthology is currently out with Ethel and his debut poetry collection Grace Engine is out with the University of Wisconsin Press.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Morning Means I Love You with Kendra Allen - July 7 @ 7PM CST
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Morning Means I Love You with Kendra Allen - July 7 @ 7PM CST]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Morning Means I Love You with Kendra Allen - July 7 @ 7PM CST
Sold outCelebrate the release of Good Morning Means I Love You with Kendra Allen!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, July 7 @ 7PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.
Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A couple years after Noon and I fall in love, we fall in love with Micah—and a couple years after that, I have both of their babies. We choose, this land and this life. We share, ourselves and our sons. We name them, Morning and Night.”
In her arresting first novel, Kendra Allen investigates love, partnership, motherhood, pleasure and the pursuit of freedom in one young woman’s defiantly unconventional terms. Rae has just returned to her family after leaving for a stretch and suddenly – that family being her two male partners and the sons, named Morning and Night, that she has mothered with each of them. In the span of one year, they will experience unfathomable depths of devastation—and joys they could never predict.
Good Morning Means I Love You follows Rae as she makes choices around sex, mothering, and partnership that are as stunning to everyone else as they are natural to herself. With pain and pleasure, she watches as her children learn to walk and give language to the world as her lovers contend with their own ideas of masculinity, personhood, and fatherhood. Along the way, Rae begins to understand the hardest and most beautiful truth: that we have only so much time on earth to make love, to make family, and to make good on the promise of this one, short life.
This is a novel of the self in all its simultaneities and a living portrait of intimacy written in poetic, bold, and sensual prose that shines a light on what it means to redefine expectation.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kendra Allen is the author of the memoir Fruit Punch, the poetry collection The Collection Plate, and the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, which won the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She writes to music column “Make Love in My Car” for Southwest Review. She was born and raised in Dallas.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Kamisha Escoto, PhD, is a Lecturer at Rice University who teaches graduate students how to communicate complex ideas clearly through writing. By day, she works in engineering communication; outside the classroom, she's an avid reader who views fiction as a way to explore the human side of how we think and relate to one another. She enjoys literary fiction and is especially drawn to stories about friendship, identity, and emotional ambiguity. A native Houstonian, she reads widely across genres with her son (and often aloud to her dog).
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Sex with Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD. - February 19 @ 7PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Sex with Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD. - February 19 @ 7PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Good Sex with Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD. - February 19 @ 7PM
Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD.
from $5.00Celebrate the release of Good Sex: Stories, Science, and Strategies for Sexual Liberation with Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, February, 19 @ 7PM
Where: LOCATION CHANGED to The Dupree Room at the Eldorado Ballrom: 2310 Elgin Street, Houston, TX 77004
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming. There are limited free tickets!
ABOUT THE BOOK
We all deserve sex that's great for everyone involved. Let sexual liberation be your guide to a truly satisfying sex life.
How we define good sex and the conditions that facilitate it will require a liberatory approach, because intersecting oppressions impose impossible sexual standards on most of us. Instead of intimate justice, we experience blocks to accessing the ingredients for erotic equity.
Good Sex presents the ingredients to revolutionize your sexual menu in a way that works well for you, including intimacy, fun, pleasure, nastiness, and connection. Each chapter offers more than just theory and science. Good Sex outlines action steps to understand, define, and practice sexual liberation in your personalized way, replacing the unseasoned sexual menu most of us were socialized into.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Candice Nicole Hargons is an award-winning psychologist and associate professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, where she studies sexual wellness and liberation. As a leading expert in sex research, Dr. Hargons has been featured in the Huffington Post, Good Housekeeping, Women's Health, Blavity, Essence, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times.
She has been featured as a keynote speaker at various conferences, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. Dr. Hargons also directs the SAMHSA-funded Neighborhood Healers Project, which trains Black community members in Mental Health First Aid to reduce mental health stigma and increase mental health literacy and service utilization.
A graduate of Spelman College, Georgia State University, and the University of Georgia, Dr. Hargons has also worked with several businesses – Paramount, Lexmark, Penguin Random House, universities – University of Tennessee, Georgia Tech, Emory University, Howard University, and other K-12 school systems on enhancing awareness of sexual health, building social justice competence, healing from racial trauma, leadership development, and creating a culture of courage. She has served on the Kentucky Psychological Association Board, the Society of Counseling Psychology Executive Board, and the American Psychological Association (APA) Council of Representatives. She also served on the APA Board of Directors. She is the recipient of an APA Presidential Citation for her research and leadership in social justice.ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Dr. Nikki Coleman is an award-winning licensed psychologist and pleasure coach with a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. After nearly 20 years in academia, Dr. Nikki took a bold step to fully invest in herself by becoming a full-time entrepreneur. She now runs a thriving business offering coaching services, workshop facilitation, and public speaking services, specifically centered on the mental and sexual wellness of high-achieving Black women. This year she launched The Pleasure Pursuit- a planner + journal designed to help women prioritize their pleasure.IG: @drnikkiknowsTikTok: @drnikkisextherapist - IRL AUTHOR TALK: Grace Engine with Joshua Burton - March 21 @ 6PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Grace Engine with Joshua Burton - March 21 @ 6PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Grace Engine with Joshua Burton - March 21 @ 6PM
from $5.00Celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the release of Grace Engine with Joshua Burton!
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, March 21st, @ 6PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Unit #2, Houston, TX 77004).
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming. Please note that all tickets are non refundable.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Words carry the dead like henchmen,” in Joshua Burton’s extraordinary debut volume, Grace Engine. These spare and powerful poems are like pallbearers, like eulogists, like survivors, like battered souls hoping and dreaming for a future that may never be. Grappling head-on with the history of lynchings, mental illness, and the endurance of black bodies and psyches against impossible odds, Burton writes, “I spent so many years being afraid to be black, that now / I am only afraid of silence, / / or the silence that it brings.”
Burton experiments with spaces, absences, and forms in navigating the tensions between shame and accountability, guilt and forgiveness, to understand how one finds the ability to cope under the worst of conditions. With patience and ferocity, he delves into generational and familial trauma to question whether black strength is inherent to blackness and to build a mechanism to survive and heal.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua Burton is a poet and educator from Houston, TX and he received his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. His chapbook Fracture Anthology is out with Ethel Press, and his debut poetry collection Grace Engine is out with the University of Wisconsin Press. He is a Tin House Scholar, a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant recipient, and a Writers' League of Texas Book Awards Discovery Prize Winner.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Chan Tea is a trans nonbinary Khmai person and multidisciplinary poet and artist whose work has been featured in publications including Glass Mountain, Sybil, Infrarrealista Review, Holy of Holies, and Location/Houston. Alongside the poems, Chan’s head is filled with pool sequences and chess calculations.
- IRL Author Talk: Guide Me Home with Attica Locke - September 11 @ 7 PM
![IRL Author Talk: Guide Me Home with Attica Locke - September 11 @ 7 PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Guide Me Home with Attica Locke - September 11 @ 7 PM
Sold outCelebrate the final installment of Attica Locke's Highway 59 Series, Guide Me Home!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, September 11, 2024 @ 7 PM
Where: Holy Family HTX (3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support Attica Locke and the bookstore!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.
Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother.
In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Attica Locke is a NY Times best-selling author of six novels, including Guide Me Home. She is also a winner of an Edgar Award and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and she has been short listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and nominated for an LA Times Book Prize and an NAACP Image award for her work as a novelist. Locke is also a screenwriter and TV producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image award for television writing. She co-created and executive produced an adaptation of her sister Tembi Locke’s memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home for Netflix. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
ReShonda Tate is the national bestselling author of more than 50 books, including her latest The Queen of Sugar Hill, based on the life of Hattie McDaniel. Her novel, Let the Church Say Amen, was made into a film directed by actress Regina King, and produced by TD Jakes and Queen Latifah. Her book, The Secret She Kept, was also made into a TV One movie starring Kyla Pratt. ReShonda made appearances in both movies. She wrote a movie, Christmas with my Ex, which will run on TV One this winter. A well-respected journalist and former TV News Anchor, ReShonda is currently Managing Editor for the Defender Newspaper and also works as a professional editor, ghostwriter, and literary consultant. A highly sought-after motivational speaker and award-winning poet, ReShonda is the recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature.
- IRL Author Talk: Harlem Rhapsody with Victoria Christopher Murray - February 5 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: Harlem Rhapsody with Victoria Christopher Murray - February 5 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Harlem Rhapsody with Victoria Christopher Murray - February 5 @ 7PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Harlem Rhapsody with Victoria Christopher Murray!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, February 5 @ 7PM
Where: Holy Family HTX (3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX, 77003)
How: Get your tickets here!
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all.
W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives…every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater, and the arts. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Christopher Murray is one of the country's top Black contemporary authors. Her novels include the Seven Deadly Sins series and Stand Your Ground, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
As a national bestselling author and award-winning journalist, ReShonda Tate has the credentials, and the passion, to bring stories to life. A highly sought-after motivational speaker/poet, ReShonda is a three-time nominee and previous winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature. She has received a plethora of distinguished awards and honors for her journalism, fiction, and poetry writing skills, including an induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Two of her novels have been made into television movies.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holler, Child with Latoya Watkins-August 31 at 7:30 PM
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holler, Child with Latoya Watkins-August 31 at 7:30 PM]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holler, Child with Latoya Watkins-August 31 at 7:30 PM
from $0.00We're celebrating Latoya Watkins second book, Holler, Child: Stories!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, August 31st at 7:30 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Garden
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and programming.
ABOUT BOOK
Set in the same Black community in Texas as PERISH, LaToya's debut novel, each story focuses on unique characters that illuminate life in Texas; they offer briliant, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful perspectives from the women and men in the community, and touch on big themes like race, power, inequality, and more.
In one story, the appearance of a horse in a man's suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police, while in another, following the mass suicide of his entire congregation, the mother of a cult leader tries to honor him in a way she couldn't while he was alive.
Fresh and urgently told, HOLLER, CHILD is a wise follow-up to LaToya's debut novel.- This collection features 11 stories--six of which have been previously published and five of which are entirely new for this collectionABOUT AUTHOR
LaToya Watkins’s writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Sun, McSweeney’s, Kenyon Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology (2015), and elsewhere. She has received grants, scholarships, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and A Public Space (she was one of their 2018 Emerging Writers Fellows). She holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. Perish was her debut novel.
ABOUT MODERATOR
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally known writer, educator, activist, and performer and the first Black poet laureate of Houston, Texas. She was formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (PSI). Her recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination, was named a finalist for the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and received an honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. Its German translation, under the title Berichtenswert, was released in Summer 2021 by Elif Verlag. The opera Marian’s Song, for which she wrote the libretto, debuted in 2020.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holy American Burnout! with Sean Enfield - March 21 @ 6:30 PM CST
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holy American Burnout! with Sean Enfield - March 21 @ 6:30 PM CST]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holy American Burnout! with Sean Enfield - March 21 @ 6:30 PM CST
from $0.00Celebrate with debut author, Sean Enfield on his newest book, Holy American Burnout!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, March 21 @ 6:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Gardent (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat and RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Sean Enfield delves into the great American condition: burnout.
Threading his experiences both as a Texan student and later as a first-year teacher of predominately Muslim students at a Texas middle school, Holy American Burnout! weaves personal essay and cultural critique into the historical fabric of Black and bi-racial identity.
Enfield intersects examinations of which voices are granted legitimacy by virtue of school curriculum, the complex relationship between basketball and education for Black and brown students, his students' burgeoning political consciousness during the 2016 presidential campaign, and cultural figures ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Hamlet.
These classroom narratives weave around Enfield's own formative experiences contending with a conflicted bi-racial family lineage, reenacting the Middle Passage as the only Black student in his 7th grade history class, and moshing in both Christian and secular hardcore pits.
As Enfield wrestles with the physical, mental, and emotional burdens that American society places on educators, students, and all relatively conscious minorities in this country, he reaches for an education that better navigates our burnt-out empire.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Enfield is an essayist, poet, gardener, bassist, and educator from Dallas, TX. He also serves as an assistant non-fiction editor at Terrain.org. His debut collection of essays, Holy American Burnout!, is forthcoming from Split/Lip Press in December 2023. You can find his work at seanenfield.com.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERMiranda Ramírez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and writer born and raised in Houston, Texas. She’s the founder and director of Defunkt Magazine & Press, a literary columnist for Public Poetry, a guest editor for Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and a co-organizer of the Houston Poetry and Arts Festival. You may find her work in Atticus Review’s–The Attic, Coffin Bell, Cowboy Jamboree, Cutthroat Journal’s anthology Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, and Ripples in Space. She is drafting her first novel as an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University. - IRL Author Talk: House Woman with Adorah Nworah-June 6 @7PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: House Woman with Adorah Nworah-June 6 @7PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: House Woman with Adorah Nworah-June 6 @7PM CST
Sold outCome celebrate the release of House Woman with Adorah Nworah!EVENT DEETSWhen: Tuesday, June 6 at 7 PM (It's publication day!)Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)How: RSVP ONLY to grab your free ticket or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming!ABOUT THE BOOKWhen Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos, Nigeria to Sugar Land, Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion, pizza parlors, and dance classes.
Desperate to please, she'll happily cater to her family's needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands for a grandson grow urgent as her every move comes under scrutiny. As Ikemefuna finds there’s no way out, her new husband grapples with the influence of his parents against his own increasing affection for her.
As family secrets boil to the surface, Ikemefuna must decide how to scrape herself out of an impossibly sticky situation: a marriage succumbing to generational cycles of pain and silence. In the end, she may be carrying the greatest secret of all.
An unforgettably delicious thriller, House Woman is about a woman trapped in a dangerous web of conflicting desires, melting in the Texas heat.
ABOUT THE AUTHORAdorah Nworah is an Igbo writer from South-East Nigeria. Her stories have been published in AFREADA and adda magazine. Her short stories, "The Bride and Broken English" made the shortlist for the 2019 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize and the longlist for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa Prize respectively. She lives in Philadelphia, where she practices real estate finance law and is cat mom to her handsome Napoleon cat.ABOUT THE MODERATORWale is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor working with folks in New York and Texas. She has a double masters degree in mental health counseling from Teachers College Columbia University. After practicing in New York for a few years, Wale moved back to her hometown Houston and started her own therapy practice in 2020. Wale currently works with individuals and couples on a weekly basis. - IRL Author Talk: How to Grow with Marcus Bridgewater - May 25 at 7 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: How to Grow with Marcus Bridgewater - May 25 at 7 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: How to Grow with Marcus Bridgewater - May 25 at 7 PM CST
Sold outPlease join us as we celebrate author, Marcus Bridgewater on his debut, How to Grow!
Event Deets:
When: Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 7 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden--2304 Stuart Street, Houston, TX 77004
How: Limited in-person tickets are available. You have the option to grab a ticket for free or purchase the book and ticket (Only books purchased at the event will be eligible to be signed by the author!)
We hope you can join us!
About the Book:
In this transformative guide, TikTok’s most popular gardener, Marcus Bridgewater—aka Garden Marcus—offers lessons for growth rooted in lessons from the plant world to help cultivate the soul.
Centered on a trinity of wellbeing—Mental Health, Physical Fitness, and Spiritual Awareness, How to Grow weaves together insights from the garden with stories from Marcus’s life to help you foster personal development. With lessons rooted in his experiences gardening—from how a replanted flourishing sweet potato vine is a reminder that all living things benefit from a change of scene, to how to embrace patience to foster growth—this inspiring guide helps you do “the dirty work” (pun intended) to discover kindness, patience, and positivity within. “We cannot make anything grow,” he advises. “But we can foster an environment where it may grow.”
How to Grow isn’t a gardening book. It is a self-help book that draws inspiration from the garden. Original, timely, and filled with nurturing wisdom, it takes perennial knowledge from plants to teach us about ourselves and opens our eyes to what we are capable of achieving.
About the Author
Marcus Bridgewater is a creator, educator, motivational speaker, and plant enthusiast. He is the personality behind Garden Marcus on social media, which demonstrates that a positive, knowledgeable approach to nurturing plants also helps us grow as people. He is the Founder & CEO of Choice Forward, a company that offers life coaching, seminars, and workshops.
About the Moderator
Brittany, creator of Foliage Faerie, operates a small batch, pop-up plant apothecary and nursery. Foliage Faerie was birthed during the pandemic on May 7, 2020 while having her first mother's day pop-up on her front porch when she was a resident in The Young Mother's Residential Program at Project Row Houses. Plants were just a hobby until realizing that the life cycles of plants, nurturing plants, growing plants, was a reflection of the birthing cycle, physical and metaphysical. It was important to share the similarities within these life cycles as she is a birth worker (doula) as well. Indoor gardening had become a self care/ spiritual practice of hers and she has created a workshop, "Indoor Gardening as a Spiritual Practice" that assists with plant enthusiasts/parents connecting to self and nature though the nurturing of indoor plants. You can find Foliage Faerie on Instagram @foliagefaerie and her website www.foliagefaerie.cm
- IRL Author Talk: How to Live Free in a Dangerous World with Shayla Lawson: February 9 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: How to Live Free in a Dangerous World with Shayla Lawson: February 9 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: How to Live Free in a Dangerous World with Shayla Lawson: February 9 @ 7PM
from $0.00Celebrate How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir with journalist, poet, author, Shayla Lawson!
EVENT DEETS
When: Friday, February 9 at 7PM
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden
How: RSVP ONLY to save you seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming
ABOUT THE BOOK
In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. With their signature prose, at turns muscular and luminous, Lawson explores layered meanings within love, time, and the self.
Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in The Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships, and the dangers of beauty during a near escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal.
Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France, to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica, to a traditional theater in Tokyo, to a Prince concert in Minnesota, and finally to find liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections, can lead to self transformation and unimagined new freedoms.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shayla Lawson (they/them) is the author of This is Major, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle and the LAMBDA Literary Award, and two poetry collections. They have written for New York Magazine, Salon, ESPN, and Paper, and have earned fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Artist Colony. They live in Lexington, Kentucky.
- IRL Author Talk: How to Say Babylon with Safiya Sinclair + francine j. harris - July 28 @ 3PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: How to Say Babylon with Safiya Sinclair + francine j. harris - July 28 @ 3PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: How to Say Babylon with Safiya Sinclair + francine j. harris - July 28 @ 3PM CST
Sold outThe paperback of How to Say Babylon is here and we're celebrating the power of Saifya Sinclair's memoir!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, July 28 @ 3PM CST
Where: Project Row Houses (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve you seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming
ABOUT THE BOOK
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.
How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SAFIYA SINCLAIR was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography, a finalist the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize in Non-Fiction and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. How to Say Babylon was named one of the 100 Notable Books of the year by the New York Times, a Top 10 Book of 2023 by the Washington Post, one of The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books of 2023, a TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2023, a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show Book Club pick, and one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023. How to Say Babylon was also named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Harper’s Bazaar, and Barnes & Noble, among others, and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year. The audiobook of How to Say Babylon was named a Best Audiobook of the Year by Audible and AudioFile magazine.
She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Sinclair’s other honours include a Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Granta, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
CONVERSATION PARTNER
francine j. harris’ third collection, Here is the Sweet Hand, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. Originally from Detroit, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She is Professor of English at the University of Houston and serves as Consulting Faculty Editor at Gulf Coast.
- IRL Author Talk: I Finally Bought Some Jordans with Michael Arceneaux - March 19 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: I Finally Bought Some Jordans with Michael Arceneaux - March 19 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: I Finally Bought Some Jordans with Michael Arceneaux - March 19 @ 7PM
Sold outLet's celebrate I Finally Bought Some Jordans with Michael Arceneaux, one of our favorite Houston authors!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, March 19 @ 7 PM
Where: Hogan Brown Gallery (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH Book to get a signed copy of I Finally Bought Some Jordans and support our programming. No refunds.
Note: There will be books on site. Copies of I Finally Bought Some Jordans bought from other retailers will not be allowed in the venue. If you would like an copy early, please purchase here.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In his books I Can't Date Jesus and I Don't Want to Die Poor, Michael Arceneaux established himself as one of the most beloved and entertaining writers of his generation, touching upon such hot-button topics as race, class, sexuality, labor, debt, and, of course, paying homage to the power and wisdom of Beyoncé. In this collection, Arceneaux takes stock of how far he has traveled—and how much ground he still has to cover in this patriarchal, heteronormative society. He explores the opportunities afforded to Black creatives but also the doors that remain shut or ever-so-slightly ajar; the confounding challenges of dating in a time when social media has made everything both more accessible and more unreliable; and the allure of returning home while still pushing yourself to seek opportunity elsewhere.
I Finally Bought Some Jordans is both a corrective to, and a balm for, these troubling times, revealing a sharply funny and keen-eyed storyteller working at the height of his craft.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Arceneaux is the New York Times-bestselling author of I Can’t Date Jesus, I Don’t Want To Die Poor, and his latest, I Finally Bought Some Jordans
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Josie Pickens is a womanist and abolitionist professor, organizer, writer and thought leader. In addition to speaking and writing about topics that focus on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, Josie is also the program director for upEND Movement, which is an organization committed to abolishing the the child welfare system. Connect with Josie and follow her musings on Twitter and Instagram at @jonubian.
- IRL Author Talk: If My Flowers Bloom with DeShara Suggs - Joe - May 24 @ 6:30PM
![IRL Author Talk: If My Flowers Bloom with DeShara Suggs - Joe - May 24 @ 6:30PM]()
IRL Author Talk: If My Flowers Bloom with DeShara Suggs - Joe - May 24 @ 6:30PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of If My Flowers Bloom with DeShara Suggs!
EVENT DEETS
When: Friday, May 24 at 6:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to serve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.
This event is in collaboration with OQUPI HTX.
ABOUT THE BOOK
If My Flowers Bloom is about desire. Is there room to bloom or does the harvest only come in the afterlife? Is it okay to be Black and queer and woman in this world?
Overflowing with love and aching for more space, DeShara Suggs-Joe questions the powers that be while longing for space carved out for her flourishing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- IRL Author Talk: In Open Contempt with Irvin Weathersby Jr. - January 9 @ 7 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: In Open Contempt with Irvin Weathersby Jr. - January 9 @ 7 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: In Open Contempt with Irvin Weathersby Jr. - January 9 @ 7 PM CST
Irvin Weathersby Jr.
from $5.00Join us as we celebrate the release of In Open Contempt with author, Irvin Weathersby, Jr.This program is in partnership with Project Row Houses.EVENT DEETS:
When: Thursday, January 9 at 7 PM CST
Where: Hogan Brown Community (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP WITH BOOK to support our programming and store or grab a free ticket.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice.
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.
Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Irvin is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Esquire, The Atlantic, The Root, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, a BA from Morehouse College and has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERS
Texas native Anthony Suber is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in SouthEast Texas. He received a BFA from the University of Houston and completed his MFA at Houston Christian University. Throughout his career, Suber has exhibited work and produced multi-tiered activations both nationally and abroad. Suber is a professor of art with the Katherine G. McGovern College at University Houston’s School of Art and an artist-in-residence with Project Row Houses in Houston’s historic Third Ward community. He also serves as the Creative Director for the arts and mental health nonprofit, The Blackman Project.
Suber’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, Project Row Houses, Houston, Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, University Museum at Texas Southern University, Houston, Art is Bond Gallery, Houston, John B. Coleman Gallery at Prairie View A&M University, Houston Museum of African American Culture, with solo exhibitions at Red Bud Arts Center in Houston, LRT Gallery, Houston and Cindy Lisica Gallery, Houston. His work has been featured in publications such as Arts and Culture Texas, Glass Tire, The Houston Chronicle, and Free Press Houston. Suber was the recipient of the Artadia Art Prize in 2022.
Wale is a licensed mental health therapist and a passionate reader who uses her platform (@theehottgirlbooks) to dive deep into powerfully emotional stories written by BIPOC authors. Her love for reading and mental health fosters a passionate approach to her work both online and in the therapy room. When she is not immersed in the literary world, you can find her watching the real housewives or building an elaborate Lego set.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Into the Light with Mark Oshiro & N.E. Davenport-April 22 at 6 PM CST
![IRL AUTHOR TALK: Into the Light with Mark Oshiro & N.E. Davenport-April 22 at 6 PM CST]()
IRL AUTHOR TALK: Into the Light with Mark Oshiro & N.E. Davenport-April 22 at 6 PM CST
Sold outCome talk mystery and fantasy with Mark Oshiro & N.E. Davenport!EVENT DEETSWhen: April 22 at 6PM CSTWhere: Kindred Stories Reading GardenHow: RSVP ONLY to grab a free ticket or RSVP WITH BOOK to support store programming and that authorABOUT THE BOOKKEEP YOUR SECRETS CLOSE TO HOMEIt’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving—and keep him alive. Now, he’s taking a chance on a traveling situation with the Varela family, whose attractive but surly son, Carlos, seems to promise a new future.
Eli abides by the rules of his family, living in a secluded community that raised him to believe his obedience will be rewarded. But an unsettling question slowly eats away at Eli’s once unwavering faith in Reconciliation: Why can’t he remember his past?
But the reported discovery of an unidentified body found in the hills of Idyllwild, California, will draw both of these young men into facing their biggest fears and confronting their own identity—and who they are allowed to be.
For fans of Courtney Summers and Tiffany D. Jackson, Into the Light is a ripped-from-the-headlines story with Oshiro's signature mix of raw emotions and visceral prose—but with a startling twist you’ll have to read to believe.ABOUT THE AUTHORMARK OSHIRO is the award-winning Latinx queer author of Anger Is a Gift, Each of Us a Desert, as well as their middle grade books The Insiders and You Only Live Once, David Bravo. They are the coauthor (with Rick Riordan) of the upcoming Nico di Angelo adventure book. When not writing, they are trying to pet every dog in the world.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERN. E. Davenport is the Science Fiction/Fantasy author of the Blood Gift duology. She attended the University of Southern California and studied Biological Sciences and Theatre Arts. She also has an M.A. in Secondary Education. She teaches English and Biology to amazing students. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys vacationing with her family, skiing, and being a huge foodie. She’s an advocate for diverse perspectives and protagonists in literature. You can find her on Twitter @nia_davenport, or on Instagram @nia.davenport, where she talks about binge-worthy TV, killer movies, and great books. She lives in Texas with her husband and kids
Stay Informed. We're building a community committed to celebrating Black authors + artisans. Subscribe to keep up with all things Kindred Stories.