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
Author Talks
- IRL Author Talk: BLK MKT Vintage with Jannah Handy & Kiyanna Stewart in conversation with Amarie Gipson
![IRL Author Talk: BLK MKT Vintage with Jannah Handy & Kiyanna Stewart in conversation with Amarie Gipson]()
IRL Author Talk: BLK MKT Vintage with Jannah Handy & Kiyanna Stewart in conversation with Amarie Gipson
from $0.00Celebrate the release BLK MKT Vintage with Jannah Handy & Kiyanna Stewart!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, October 24 @ 7 PM
Where: Eldorado Ballroom (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.
This event is in partnership with Project Row Houses!
ABOUT THE BOOK
This one-of-a-kind treasure trove of Black cultural ephemera, from the entrepreneurs behind the vintage shop BLK MKT Vintage, expands on their mission to curate vintage objects that tell Black stories and celebrate the contributions Black people have made to our American consciousness.
Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart have spent years scouring piles, stacks, bookshelves, and dilapidated boxes in search of themselves and their history, Black history. Through their Brooklyn brick-and-mortar BLK MKT Vintage and online shop, they have uncovered tens of thousands of items including vintage literature, vinyl records, clothing, art, decor, furniture and more.
BLK MKT Vintage: Reclaiming Objects and Curiosities That Tell Black Stories invites readers into Handy and Stewart’s work and partnership as they pick, collect, curate, design, and reimagine futures for the objects of the past. Brimming with more than 300 photographs of vintage pieces of ephemera, the book is a beautiful, ephemeral object itself calling to mind a scrapbook or family album that has a surprise on every page whether that’s 1972 celluloid pins from Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign, early 1800’s hand-drawn maps of the African continent, or 1920’s bound yearbooks from various HBCUs. The book also explores the various concepts that ground Handy and Stewart’s work; interviews with Black archivists, artists, memory workers and collectors – including a foreword from Spike Lee; a look into their private collection of thousands of items they have discovered over the years; an explanation of the different players in the antiques and vintage world; and tips and tricks on how to begin your own collection and curate physical spaces that reflect your identity and experience.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart are the co-founders of BLK MKT Vintage, an online vintage/antique concept shop that specializes in collectibles and curiosities, representing the richness of black history and lived experience. Their passion for material culture and found objects has led them to interior design projects, personal sourcing, set design, prop rental, museum loans and other curatorial projects in media/entertainment, education, the arts & philanthropy. Jannah has a background in business and education, with a B.A. in Economics from Smith College, and a M.Ed. in Higher Education from UMASS, Amherst. Kiyanna has a background in fashion & education, with a B.A. in Journalism & Africana Studies and a M.A. in Women's Studies, all from Rutgers University
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Amarie Cemone Gipson is a writer, cultural worker and founder of The Reading Room, a Black art reference library in Houston, Texas. - IRL Author Talk: Ours with Phillip B. Williams + Kiese Laymon - October 27 @ 3PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Ours with Phillip B. Williams + Kiese Laymon - October 27 @ 3PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Ours with Phillip B. Williams + Kiese Laymon - October 27 @ 3PM CST
from $0.00Join us to commemorate Phillip B. Williams's first novel, Ours: A Novel!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, October 27 @ 3PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve you seat (and bring your own copy) or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your copy.
If you are student or in financial need, please reach out to inquire about a free ticket.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours.
It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own. As the cracks in Saint’s creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community’s safety might be yet another form of bondage.
Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Williams is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and the Randolph College low-residency MFA.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
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. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Jax Freeman and Phantom Shriek with Kwame Mbalia - October 9 @ 6:30 PM
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IRL AUTHOR TALK: Jax Freeman and Phantom Shriek with Kwame Mbalia - October 9 @ 6:30 PM
from $0.00Celebrate the newest book from Freedom Fire, Jax Freeman and Phantom Shriek!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, October 9 @ 6:30 PM CST
Where: Dupree Room (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your copy of the book!
ABOUT THE BOOK
What do you get when you combine Kwame Mbalia's incredible imagination and world-building talent with trains, history, and ghosts? Nothing less than middle grade magic.
On his twelfth birthday, Jackson "Jax" Freeman arrives at Chicago's Union Station alone, carrying nothing but the baggage of a scandal back in Raleigh. He's been sent away from home to live with relatives he barely knows. But even worse are the strangers who accost him at the train station, including a food vendor who throws dust in his face and a conductor who tries to steal his skin.
At his new school, Jax is assigned to a special class for "summoners," even though he has no idea what those are . . . until he accidentally unleashes an angry spirit on school grounds. Soon Jax is embroiled in all kinds of trouble, from the disappearance of a new friend to full-out war between summoning families.
When Jax learns that he isn't the first Freeman to be blamed for a tragedy he didn't create, he resolves to clear his own name and that of his great-grandfather, who was a porter back in the 1920's. By following clues, Jax and his schoolmates unlock the secrets of a powerful Praise House, evade vengeful ghosts, and discover that Jax may just be the most talented summoner of all.
A unique magic-school fantasy from the best-selling and award-winning author of the Tristan Strong trilogy has just pulled into the station.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kwame Mbalia is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and the publisher of Freedom Fire, an imprint of Disney Hyperion devoted to stories about the Black diaspora by Black creators. His debut middle-grade novel, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it was followed by Tristan Strong Destroys the World and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching. Kwame lives with his wife and children outside Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is currently working on the next Jax Freeman adventure. For more information, go to www.KwameMbalia.com.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Nia "N.E." Davenport is the award-winning author of the adult fantasy novels "The Blood Trials" and its sequel "The Blood Gift." She is also the author of the YA speculative thriller "Out of Body," which is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and forthcoming YA fantasy romance "Love Spells Trouble." She attended the University of Southern California and studied Biological Sciences and Theatre. She has an M.A. in Secondary Education, taught secondary English and Science for several years, and designs English/Language Arts curriculum for school districts across the US. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys vacationing with her family, being a huge foodie, and talking about binge-worthy TV, fun movies, and killer books.
- IRL Author Talk: Love & Sportsball with Meka James - October 9 @ 7:30 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Love & Sportsball with Meka James - October 9 @ 7:30 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Love & Sportsball with Meka James - October 9 @ 7:30 PM CST
from $0.00Celebrate Love & Sportsball with author, Meka James!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, October 9 @ 7:30 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to save your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support our bookstore and the author!
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this steamy and sweet sapphic romance, set in the world of women's basketball, an uptight athletic trainer has one taboo night with a hot team member determined to play for her heart – and win.
Hard work has Khadijah Upton starting her dream job as an athletic trainer for the WNBA Atlanta Cannons. Then an evening of celebratory letting loose turns into a one-night-stand with a beautiful stranger. It’s a reckless, wildly sexy encounter that Khadijah intends to forget…until her first day on the job lands her face to face with Shae Harris again.
Shae is a major player in every sense of the word, and Khadijah doesn’t plan to be the latest in a long line of “Harris Honeys.” Personal and professional just don’t mix. But Shae, who’s all about living life to the fullest, keeps tempting Khadijah to blur the boundaries. And the more Shae reveals about herself, the harder it is for Khadijah to resist her.
In the bedroom, their tension sizzles. On the court, it’s a liability. But unless Khadijah’s willing to really let Shae in, it won’t be just the championship on the line, but a body-and-soul connection that rewrites all the rules.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meka James is a writer of adult contemporary and erotic romance. A born and raised Georgia Peach, she still resides in the southern state with her hubby of 16 years and counting. Mom to four kids of the two legged variety, she also has four fur-babies of the canine variety. Leo the turtle and Spade the snake rounds out her wacky household. When not writing or reading, Meka can be found playing The Sims 3, sometimes Sims 4, and making up fun stories to go with the pixelated people whose world she controls.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Chencia C. Higgins is just a girl from Texas who has made it her mission to create stories in which sassy, southern Black women are loved out loud. In 2019 she won a Romance Slam Jam Emma award for her debut paranormal romance, Janine: His True Alpha. When she isn't hunkered down in her writing cave, Chencia can be found with her nose in a book, saving recipes on Pinterest for things she'll never make, and dreaming about traveling even further south for the winter.
- IRL Author Talk: Guide Me Home with Attica Locke - September 11 @ 7 PM
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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: Seasons of Growth with Marcus Bridgewater - September 21 @ 9:30AM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Seasons of Growth with Marcus Bridgewater - September 21 @ 9:30AM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Seasons of Growth with Marcus Bridgewater - September 21 @ 9:30AM CST
Marcus Bridgewater
Sold outCelebrate the release of Seasons of Growth with Marcus Bridgewater!
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, September 21 @ 9:30AM
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
Start your journey to flourishing with wisdom from the garden.
With the same soothing and sage insights from his beloved online channels where he is known as Garden Marcus, Marcus Bridgewater invites us all to journal on growth and transformation inspired by nature.
Using the central metaphor of a tree, Bridgewater explores how to undergo personal transformation in our minds (the leaves), in our bodies (the trunk), and in our spirit (our roots). Just as a tree yearns to grow, so do we. But as Marcus makes clear, “writing a single journal entry and expecting your life to turn around is like asking for fruit from a tree you planted yesterday. Growth doesn’t just happen—it’s a never-ending process, something we should welcome and embrace.”
In this beautiful self-care journal, we can discover powerful and healing practices organized by the seasons, each mirroring different stages of our growth process:
- SUMMER: learning how to pace and keep tempo
- FALL: opening ourselves to embrace transition and practice gratitude
- WINTER: taking time to rest, reflect, and prepare
- SPRING: discovering inspiration, keeping momentum
Like the rings of a tree marking every year of growth, our journal can become a log of lessons learned throughout the seasons of our lives. Featuring journal prompts, activities, breathing and mindfulness exercises, and bite-sized bits of knowledge to help us slow down, experiment with new wellness practices, Seasons of Growth can lead us to find inner clarity, harmony, and peace.
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, and he is the author of How to Grow: Nurture Your Garden, Nurture Yourself. He lives in Texas with his wife, son, and a thousand plants.
- IRL Author Talk: Autobiomythography of with Ayokunle Falomo - September 12 @ 7 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Autobiomythography of with Ayokunle Falomo - September 12 @ 7 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Autobiomythography of with Ayokunle Falomo - September 12 @ 7 PM CST
from $5.00Celebrate the release of Autobiomythography of with Ayokunle Falomo!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, September 12 @ 7 PM
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
Autobiomythography of sifts through Nigerian stories and mythologies, both inherited and invented, to explore the self, family, and nationhood.
In an attempt at decolonization, it is an exploration of what it means to be a subject—a person, yes, but also a literary subject—in the wake and afterlife of colonization. Intimate and personal, it is interested in figuring out how to wrest subjectivity—one’s notion of self—from this failed project of modernity.
As the title suggests, the book spans and swirls together autobiography, mythology, biography, history (shared and personal), and geography. Amidst myriad speakers in the collection, there is a prominent speaker who, in search of his self/voice, tries on multiple voices—including Frederick Lugard’s—and other personas: some closer to who/what he is, whatever that is, and others diametrically opposite.
Tangentially, this is a book about a son's relationship with his father. Poem after poem, the speakers interrogate the perceptions of identity, reality, and ownership, and in the pursuit of Truth they erode the boundaries between fact and fiction to show us the fragility of the lines we draw in service to these abstractions, of the beliefs we hold about them, of the acts we perform in service to them.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AYOKUNLE FALOMO is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Aris Kian is a Houston enthusiast and student of abolitionists. Her poems are published with Button Poetry, West Branch, Obsidian Lit, The West Review and elsewhere. She ranks #2 in the 2023 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam and is the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate. She received her MFA from the University of Houston as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and currently works in communications and narrative power building. - 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
$30.00Celebrate 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: 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: Blood at the Root with LaDarrion Williams - August 24 @ 4PM
![IRL Author Talk: Blood at the Root with LaDarrion Williams - August 24 @ 4PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Blood at the Root with LaDarrion Williams - August 24 @ 4PM
from $5.00Celebrate the release of Blood at the Root with LaDarrion Williams!
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, August 24 @ 4PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to save your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ten years ago, Malik's life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother: a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended.
At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself— one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at Caiman: feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries.
In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what's left of his old family as well as his new one. Exploring the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, this heart-pounding fantasy series opener is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LaDarrion Williams is a Los Angeles based-playwright, filmmaker, NYT bestselling author, and screenwriter whose goal is to cultivate a new era of Black fantasy, providing space and agency for Black characters and stories in a new, fresh and fantastical way. He is currently a resident playwright/co-creator of The Black Creators Collective, where his play UMOJA made its West Coast premiere in January 2022 and produced North Hollywood’s first Black playwrights festival at the Waco Theater Center. Blood at the Root is his first novel.
- 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: 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
from $5.00The 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: The Outsider Advantage with Ciera Rogers - June 20 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: The Outsider Advantage with Ciera Rogers - June 20 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: The Outsider Advantage with Ciera Rogers - June 20 @ 7PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of The Outsider Advantage: Because You Don't Need to Fit in to Win with Ciera Rogers!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, June 20 at 7PM
Where: 3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX, 77005
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming with book!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ciera Rogers is known for being an “Outsider”—and she likes it that way. As the founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar brand that caters to curvy women of all shades, worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian and championed by Beyoncé, Ciera has rallied the very women the fashion industry is designed to ignore around the radical idea that what makes you different is actually your superpower.
The Outsider Advantage is for Outsiders like her: the dreamers, doers, and go-getters that society continuously overlooks and underestimates, but who are uniquely equipped to achieve glass-shattering success.
In this bold and inspiring memoir, Ciera shares the moments in her life that left the biggest impact—being kidnapped at a young age by her estranged father, running hustles in strip clubs, living in her mom’s red Jeep, daring to post her first outfit for sale on Instagram, hitting seven-figures, and buying a home—and unearths the powerful lessons she has taken away from her past and her unorthodox rise, like how to harness what you already have and how to use your trauma as a motivator. She also speaks to feelings of millennial rage, as on her journey, she came to realize that the American Dream is a lie. But she didn’t allow that to stop her from outmaneuvering the system to finally live the life she wanted.
Arguing that what the world calls limitations—lack of connections, resources, fancy degrees, or even the “right” look—are actually our biggest competitive advantages, Ciera teaches anyone who has ever been overlooked, ignored or underestimated how to embrace their Outsider status to find unstoppable success.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ciera Rogers is a Los Angeles based fashion designer behind the women’s wear line Babes. As a social media influencer, she uses her reach of 2+ million to spread her message of body positivity, self-acceptance, and empowerment to women worldwide. She and her work have been featured in Fox, Vogue, Mashable, The New York Post, and The New York Journal, among many other publications. The Outsider Advantage is her first book.ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Len Cannon is the KHOU 11 News anchor at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. He came to KHOU in 2006. Len is an award winning journalist having won Emmy Awards in local news. And, the National Association of Black Journalist First Place Award and the prestigious Columbia University Dupont, "Silver Baton" award for his reporting as a correspondent for Dateline NBC. He has also won various community awards, including one from the Houston Fire Department. Len is a graduate of Ashland University in his home state of Ohio, where he majored in radio and TV.
- 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: Rooted with Brea Baker - June 29 @ 2PM
![IRL Author Talk: Rooted with Brea Baker - June 29 @ 2PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Rooted with Brea Baker - June 29 @ 2PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership with Brea Baker!
This event is in partnership with Project Row Houses.
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, June 29 at 2 PM
Where: Project Row Houses (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to attend the talk or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Why is less than 1% of rural land in the U.S. owned by Black people? An acclaimed writer and activist explores the impact of land theft and violent displacement on racial wealth gaps, arguing that justice stems from the literal roots of the earth.
To understand the contemporary racial wealth gap, we must first unpack the historic attacks on Indigenous and Black land ownership. From the moment that colonizers set foot on Virginian soil, a centuries-long war was waged, resulting in an existential dilemma: Who owns what on stolen land? Who owns what with stolen labor? To answer these questions, we must confront one of this nation’s first sins: stealing, hoarding, and commodifying the land.
Research suggests that between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. Land theft widened the racial wealth gap, privatized natural resources, and created a permanent barrier to access that should be a birthright for Black and Indigenous communities. Rooted traces the experiences of Brea Baker's family history of devastating land loss in Kentucky and North Carolina, identifying such violence as the root of persistent inequality in this country. Ultimately, her grandparents' commitment to Black land ownership resulted in the "Bakers Acres"—a family haven where they are sustained by the land, surrounded by love, and wholly free.
A testament to the Black farmers who dreamed of feeding, housing, and tending to their communities, Rooted bears witness to their commitment to freedom and reciprocal care for the land. By returning equity to a dispossessed people, we can heal both the land and our nation’s soul.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brea Baker has been working on the frontlines for over a decade. She believes deeply in nuanced storytelling and Black culture to drive change, and has commented on race, gender, and sexuality for Elle, Harper’s BAZAAR, Refinery29, THEM, and more. Her writing has been featured in the anthologies OUR HISTORY HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONTRABAND and NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.
A Yale alumna, Brea has been recognized as a 2017 Glamour Woman of the Year, a 2019 i-D Up and Rising, and a 2023 Creative Capital awardee. She has spoken at the United Nations' Girl Up Initiative, Yale Law School, the Youth 2 Youth Summit in Hong Kong, the Museum of City of New York, and more.ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Kavon Ward is an award-winning spoken word artist and activist. Within the past decade, Kavon has won 1st place at the historic Apollo Theater and has shared the stage with gospel artists Hezekiah Walker, Patti LaBelle, Fantasia, and activists like Joe Madison and Dick Gregory, to perform her piece, “I Am Trayvon Martin” Kavon is the founder of Justice for Bruce’s Beach and has led the historic and successful movement that made it possible for stolen land to be returned to the descendants of Black landowners, Willa and Charles Bruce. The descendants of the Bruces recently sold the reclaimed land to LA County for $20 million dollars. Kavon was named a 35th Senate District, 2022 Woman of the Year by Senator Steven Bradford.
Kavon has since been quoted in the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and a host of other articles. She has interviewed with NPR, 94.7 The WAVE, and a number of other radio stations, to discuss what justice for the Bruce family means and what reparations for Black Americans look like. Kavon has partnered with Patrisse Cullors, of Black Lives Matter, to create a petition calling for restitution and restoration for the Bruce family. Kavon is a reparative justice consultant and Founder and CEO of Where Is My Land, an organization focused on getting Black land back nationally. She is a former Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) fellow and public policy lobbyist. Kavon holds a BA in Communications and a Master of Public Administration.
- IRL Author Talk: Masquerade with O.O. Sangoyomi - July 10 @ 7:30 PM CST
![IRL Author Talk: Masquerade with O.O. Sangoyomi - July 10 @ 7:30 PM CST]()
IRL Author Talk: Masquerade with O.O. Sangoyomi - July 10 @ 7:30 PM CST
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Masquerade with O.O. Sangoyomi!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, July 10 @ 7:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your spot or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Òdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland, and living conditions for the women in her blacksmith guild, who were already shunned as social pariahs, grow even worse.
Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of ?àngót?`, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife.
In a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, she finds the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy too enticing to resist. As tensions with rival states grow, revealing elaborate schemes and enemies hidden in plain sight, Òdòdó must defy the cruel king she has been forced to wed by reforging the shaky loyalties of the court in her favor, or risk losing everything—including her life.
Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue which turn an entire region on its head.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
O. O. SANGOYOMI is a Nigerian American author with a penchant for African mythology and history. During a childhood of constantly moving around within the U.S., she found an anchored home in the fictional worlds of books. Sangoyomi is a graduate of Princeton University, where she studied English and African American Studies. Masquerade is her debut novel
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Vaishnavi Patel is the author of Goddess of the River and the instant New York Times bestseller Kaikeyi. A lawyer specializing in civil rights, she likes to write at the intersection of Indian myth, feminism, and anticolonialism. She grew up in and around Chicago and, in her spare time, enjoys activities that are almost stereotypically Midwestern: knitting, ice skating, drinking hot chocolate, and making hotdish.
- IRL Author Talk: They Built Me For Freedom with Tonya Duncan Ellis - June 9 @ 2PM
![IRL Author Talk: They Built Me For Freedom with Tonya Duncan Ellis - June 9 @ 2PM]()
IRL Author Talk: They Built Me For Freedom with Tonya Duncan Ellis - June 9 @ 2PM
from $0.00Celebrate the release of They Built Me For Freedom: The Story of Juneteenth and Houston's Emancipation Park with Tonya Duncan Ellis!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, June 9, 2024 @ 2 PM
Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to attend the event or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your copy.
Note: Outside copies of They Built Me For Freedom will not be allowed inside the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A vibrant, moving picture book about the history of Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas—and the origins of Juneteenth.
When people visit me, they are free—to run, play, gather, and rejoice.
They built me to remember.
On June 19, 1865, the 250,000 enslaved people of Texas learned they were free, ending slavery in the United States. This day was soon to be memorialized with the dedication of a park in Houston. The park was called Emancipation Park, and the day it honored would come to be known as Juneteenth.
In the voice and memory of the park itself—its fields and pools, its protests and cookouts, and, most of all, its people—the 150-year story of Emancipation Park is brought to life. Through lyrical text and vibrant artwork, Tonya Duncan Ellis and Jenin Mohammed have crafted an ode to the struggle, triumph, courage, and joy of Black America—and the promise of a people to remember.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tonya Duncan Ellis is a former journalist and the author of the Sophie Washington series. She lives in Houston, Texas. You can visit her at tonyaduncanellis.com.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: The Grandest Garden with Gina L. Carroll - June 6 @ 7:30 PM CST
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IRL AUTHOR TALK: The Grandest Garden with Gina L. Carroll - June 6 @ 7:30 PM CST
from $5.00Celebrate the release of The Grandest Garden with Gina L. Carroll!
EVENT DEETS
When: Thursday, June 6, 2024
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support our programming and the author.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this coming-of-age story about the cycle of life in and out of the garden, Bella Fontaine comes to understand as a young woman trying to make her way in the world, that when it’s time to leave home, it’s time—whether you feel ready or not.
Bella Fontaine is on her own. Fresh out of college and with the winnings from her first international photography competition, she decides to leave Los Angeles to forge a new life in New York City. But will she be able to overcome the trauma of her childhood and her break from home to make it as a successful artist and professional photographer in a new city? Or will her secrets catch up with her ,and keep her from developing the relationships she needs to make her dreams come true?
We meet young Bella just after her tenth birthday, and her grandmothers, Olivette and Miriam, each with a beautiful, mature garden as different from each other as the two gardeners who tend them. As Bella’s homelife begins to unravel, she relies on her grandmother’s gardens as her refuge for stability and belonging. But when Miriam moves in with Olivette in search of healing, the grandmothers bond in a way that makes Bella feel excluded. What happens next sends Bella out into the world before she is ready.
The Grandest Garden is a poignant coming-of-age story about the ties that bind us to our people and how to survive when they break.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gina L. Carroll is the author of A Story That Matters: A Gratifying Way to Write About Your Life and editor of Stories Are Medicine: Writing to Heal, An Anthology. A self-pro-fessed story wrangler, Gina founded StoryHouse Texas, a creative space dedicated to cultivating and amplifying the diversity of vision and voice in story. The Grandest Garden is her debut novel. She currently lives in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Gina, visit www.ginacarroll.com.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
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). 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.
Her most recent choreopoem, PLUMSHUGA: The rise of Lauren Anderson, debuted at Stages Theater and made the cover of the NY Times Culture Section. Her forthcoming opera, She Who Dared, composed by Jasmine Barnes, will debut in Spring 2025. Her memoir, Black Chameleon (Henry Holt & Co, 2023), recently won the the Carr P. Collins award for Best Nonfiction through the Texas Institute of Letters (2024). Order your copy now.
- IRL Author Talk: Storm: Goddess of Dawn and Barda with Tiffany D. Jackson & Ngozi Ukazu - June 4 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: Storm: Goddess of Dawn and Barda with Tiffany D. Jackson & Ngozi Ukazu - June 4 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Storm: Goddess of Dawn and Barda with Tiffany D. Jackson & Ngozi Ukazu - June 4 @ 7PM
from $5.00Join us to celebrate the release of TWO books, Storm: Goddess of Dawn by Tiffany D. Jackson and Barda by Ngozi Ukazu!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, June 4 @ 7PM
Where: 2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004
How: Purchase your TICKET ONLY or RSVP WITH STORM or RSVP WITH BARDA or RSVP WITH BUNDLE (with both books)
Please reach out if you, your kids or students would like to attend but are not in the financial place to do so.
ABOUT THE STORM
Few can weather the storm.
As a thief on the streets of Cairo, Ororo Munroe is an expert at blending in—keeping her blue eyes low and her white hair beneath a scarf. Stealth is her specialty . . . especially since strange things happen when she loses control.
Lately, Ororo has been losing control more often, setting off sudden rainstorms and mysterious winds . . . and attracting dangerous attention. When she is forced to run from the Shadow King, a villain who steals people's souls, she has nowhere to turn to but herself. There is something inside her, calling her across Africa, and the hidden truth of her heritage is close enough to taste.
But as Ororo nears the secrets of her past, her powers grow stronger and the Shadow King veers closer and closer. Can she outrun the shadows that chase her? Or can she step into the spotlight and embrace the coming storm?ABOUT BARDU
Darkseid is…and life on Apokolips is tough—but then, it is hell after all. And no one knows this better than Barda, Granny Goodness’s right hand warrior.
But Barda has a secret…she is in love. Or she is drawn to the idea of it anyway, whether it be the beauty of a flower, her affection for her closest friend, Aurelie, or the mysterious and fierce enemy warrior, Orion, who is the only match for Barda’s strength.
But when Granny decides Barda is becoming too soft, she assigns Barda a task that might be more than she can handle—to break the seemingly unbreakable Scott Free. And as Barda questions why Scott has such hope and what he might have done to promote such hatred from Granny, she finds herself drawn to him in a way she never expected.
The only thing is, we do not speak of love on Apokolips…ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of YA novels Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, White Smoke, Santa in The City, The Weight of Blood, and co-author of Blackout and Whiteout: A Novel. A Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Award-winner and NAACP Image Award-nominee, she received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is currently splitting her time between the borough she loves and the south, most likely multitasking.Ngozi Ukazu is a DC Comics artist, New York Times-bestselling graphic novelist, and the creator of comics like Check, Please!, BUNT!, and the forthcoming graphic novel FLIP. She graduated from Yale University with a degree in Computing in the Arts, and since 2020 her cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker. - IRL Artist Talk: Rick Lowe with Ryan Dennis and Assata Richards - May 22 @ 7PM
![IRL Artist Talk: Rick Lowe with Ryan Dennis and Assata Richards - May 22 @ 7PM]()
IRL Artist Talk: Rick Lowe with Ryan Dennis and Assata Richards - May 22 @ 7PM
Sold out*please note Ryan Dennis and Assata Richards will no longer be moderating.
Celebrate the first monograph dedicated to Rick Lowe's art practice!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, May 22 at 7PM
Where: The Eldorado Ballroom (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to save your seat. RSVP WITH BOOK to get a copy of Rick Lowe's book. Limited books will be available onsite.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Houston-based artist Rick Lowe is widely known for his pioneering contributions to the development of “social practice art,” work that landed him a MacArthur fellowship in 2014. What few people realize is that he was originally trained as a landscape painter. In recent years, Lowe has increasingly turned back to painting, producing complex multi-panel and quasi-abstract images that are deeply rooted in thirty years of work creating “social sculptures,” recalling the urban fabric of cities around the world that have formed the backdrop of many of his community-based art projects. This book, which brilliantly reproduces Lowe’s paintings, is the first dedicated to the work of this important American artist, focusing on his painterly practice and its origins in his work in the public sphere.ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rick Lowe was born in 1961 in rural Russell County, Alabama, and lives and works in Houston.
Collections include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the UBS Art Collection. Solo exhibitions include Art League Houston (2020–21). He also participated in Documenta 14, Athens (2017).
Among Lowe’s numerous community art projects are Project Row Houses, Houston (1993–2018); Watts House Project, Los Angeles (1996–2012); Borough Project (with Suzanne Lacy and Mary Jane Jacob), Charleston, SC (2003); Small Business/Big Change, Anyang Public Art Program, Korea (2010); Trans.lation, Dallas (2013); Victoria Square Project, Athens (2017–18); Greenwood Art Project, Tulsa, OK (2018–21); and Black Wall Street Journey, Chicago (2021–).
In 2013 President Barack Obama appointed Lowe to the National Council on the Arts, and in 2014 he was named a Mac Arthur Fellow. Lowe was a Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society from 2019-2021. He is currently a professor of interdisciplinary practice at the University of Houston.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERS
Ryan N. Dennis is Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021), and organizing CAPE Artist-in-Resident Shani Peter’s Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers with the local Jackson community. She is the co-curator of the critically acclaimed exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Prior to joining the MMA, she served as the Curator and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, where she worked with over 100 BIPOC artists to exhibit their work in the shot-gun houses, she led the creation of the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and established Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program. In 2017, she launched the PRH Fellowship with the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. Dennis earned her master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute with a focus in Curatorial Practice. Her writings have appeared in online and print catalogs, journals and publications nationally and internationally. She has been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and institutions and has taught courses on community-based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston. Most recently she was the co-curator of the 2021 Texas Biennial titled A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon (2021) and the guest art editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
Assata Richards is a native of Houston, Texas and received much of her education in East Texas in the community known as “County Line”. After completing her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Houston, she earned a Master’s and PhD from Pennsylvania State University in Sociology with a concentration on political and community participation, research methods and mass incarceration. After serving as a faculty member at University of Pittsburgh, Assata returned to her community of Third Ward in Houston, Texas, where she is living and working with Project Row Houses and serving as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston. As a scholar and community organizer, she is fulfilling her lifelong commitment to social change and justice. Assata also serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Commissioners for Houston Housing Authority, as a appointee of Mayor Annise Parker.
- 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: Pretty with KB Brookins & Kiese Laymon - May 29 @ 7:30 PM
![IRL Author Talk: Pretty with KB Brookins & Kiese Laymon - May 29 @ 7:30 PM]()
IRL Author Talk: Pretty with KB Brookins & Kiese Laymon - May 29 @ 7:30 PM
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Pretty: Memoir with author, KB Brookins!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, May 29 @ 7:30 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.
Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.
“I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” Brookins writes. “Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I’m perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can’t change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean—to be a girl-turned-man when you’re something else entirely?”
Informed by KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency—whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as “other”ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KB BROOKINS is a Black, queer, and trans writer and cultural worker from Texas. They are the author of Freedom House and How to Identify Yourself with a Wound. Brookins has poems, essays, and installation art published in Academy of American Poets, Teen Vogue, Poetry Magazine, Prizer Arts & Letters, Okayplayer, Poetry Society of America, Autostraddle, and other venues. They have earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, Equality Texas, and others.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
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. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
- IRL Author Talk: Love Cake with Douglas Bell - May 18 @ 2PM
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IRL Author Talk: Love Cake with Douglas Bell - May 18 @ 2PM
from $0.00Celebrate the release of Love Cake with author, Douglas Bell!
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 2 PM
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat. RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Love Cake is contemporary fiction about Bryan Hicks and his transgender girlfriend, Nadia Brooks. Together they own and operate a bakery in conservative Texas. At its red velvet core, Love Cake is a story about how love persists in the face of prejudice and about the value of found family. It speaks to the power of loving people despite the mistakes they make.
With thought-provoking insight, Douglas Bell in Love Cake, the second book of The Cakes Series duology and the sequel to Cake Walk, rings a bell again on an untold story that teaches how we can find the courage to show up for each other as the world tries to tear us apart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas Bell is a fiction writer based in the bustling city of Houston, Texas. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the teachings of Buddha and the Dalai Lama, as well as the powerful storytelling of James Baldwin. When he's not writing, you can usually find him hitting the gym, experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen, or staying up to date with the latest fashion trends.
- Virtual Author Talk: The Black Girl Survives in This One with Desiree S. Evans and Saraceia J. Fennell - April 29 @ 6PM CST
![Virtual Author Talk: The Black Girl Survives in This One with Desiree S. Evans and Saraceia J. Fennell - April 29 @ 6PM CST]()
Virtual Author Talk: The Black Girl Survives in This One with Desiree S. Evans and Saraceia J. Fennell - April 29 @ 6PM CST
from $0.00Join Desiree S. Evans and Saraceia J. Fennell along with a few contributors to celebrate The Black Girl Survives in This One!
EVENT DEETS
When: Monday, April 29 @ 6PM CST
Where: Virtual Via Zoom
How: RSVP ONLY to be sent the Zoom link to attend the event or RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase a copy of the book!
ABOUT THE BOOK
A YA anthology of horror stories centering Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, and who survive to the end.Be warned, dear reader:The Black girls survive in this one.
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.
The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L. L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maritza & Maika Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Desiree S. Evans is a writer from the Louisiana bayou. She currently lives in New Orleans, where she spins spooky and fantastical tales for kids, teens, and adults. Desiree holds an MFA in Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin, as well as degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and international affairs from Columbia University. Connect with Desiree on her website at desiree-evans.com and on Instagram/Twitter at @literarydesiree.Saraciea J. Fennell is a Black Honduran American writer, founder of The Bronx is Reading, and creator of Honduran Garifuna Writers. She is also a book publicist who has worked with many award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors. She is the editor of the nonfiction anthology, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, and her work has appeared in Popsugar, Refinery29, and Culturess,among others. Sign up for her newsletter, Black Girl Dreaming, on Substack for more of her writing. She lives in the Bronx with her family and black poodle, Oreo. - IRL Author Talk: The Dead Don't Need Reminding with Julian Randall - May 14 @ 6:30 PM
![IRL Author Talk: The Dead Don't Need Reminding with Julian Randall - May 14 @ 6:30 PM]()
IRL Author Talk: The Dead Don't Need Reminding with Julian Randall - May 14 @ 6:30 PM
Sold outCelebrate the release of The Dead Don't Need Reminding with Julian Randall!
EVENT DEETS
When: Tuesday, May 14, 2024 @ 6:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This brilliant, adult nonfiction debut from the acclaimed MG author and poet weaves two personal narratives of recovery and reclamation, spliced with a dazzle of pop-culture
The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall’s return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather.
Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is Randall’s journey to get his ghost story back.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julian Randall is a contributor to the #1 New York Times bestseller Black Boy Joy and his middle-grade novel, Pilar Ramirez and the Escape From Zafa, was published by Holt in 2022. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Tin House, and Milkweed Editions. He is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle, the 2019 Frederick Bock Prize, and a Pushcart prize. His poetry has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY. His first book, Refuse, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He lives in Chicago
ABOUT THE INTERLOCUTOR
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. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
- IRL Author + Illustrator Talk: Yaya and the Sea with Karen Good Marable & Tonya Engel - April 7 @ 12PM
![IRL Author + Illustrator Talk: Yaya and the Sea with Karen Good Marable & Tonya Engel - April 7 @ 12PM]()
IRL Author + Illustrator Talk: Yaya and the Sea with Karen Good Marable & Tonya Engel - April 7 @ 12PM
Sold outLet's celebrate author, Karen Good Marable and illustrator, Tonya Engel on their new book, Yaya and The Sea!
ABOUT THE BOOK
A family goes on a trip from the city to the sea in search of renewal in this “lively and lovely…beautiful” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming) picture book that’s an ode to sisterhood, nature, and being present.
On the first day of spring, when the city is quiet and still, little Yaya takes the A train down to New York City’s southern shores with her mama and aunties to greet Mama Ocean and celebrate the arrival of a new season through a ritual of letting go of the past and embracing the new.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Good Marable is a writer raised in Prairie View, Texas. Her essays, music journalism, and stories have appeared in several books and publications including The New Yorker, Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner,Seventeen, and Essence. After a lifetime of living in Brooklyn, she and her family now reside in Atlanta.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Tonya Engel is a self-taught painter and children’s book illustrator whose work can be found in many picture books, among them Our Lady of Guadalupe, Because Claudette, Impossible Moon, and the jacket art for Hurricane Child. Her work is inspired by Southern folk artists. Early in her career, she explored abstract painting but soon began to concentrate on figurative form mixed with emotion and expressionistic narrative. Engel lives in Houston, Texa - IRL Author Talk: Mo'Lasses with Viktor Givens - March 6 @ 6 PM CST
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IRL Author Talk: Mo'Lasses with Viktor Givens - March 6 @ 6 PM CST
$0.00Celebrate Viktor Given's book, Mo'Lasses: Ancestral (Re)Memories, Myth 'nd Lore!
EVENT DEETS
When: Wednesday, March 6 @ 6:00 PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Garden
How: RSVP to let us know that you will be present
ABOUT THE BOOK
There is magic, reverence and mystery in the spaces, objects and writings of Viktor le. Givens a multi-modal performance artist, whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to re-contextualize the seemingly mundane into the spectacularly sacred. Part ritual ‘nd part prose performance score this book is written to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to (re)reading, (re)sounding, (re)imagining ‘nd (re)staging memories ‘nd pathologies of his Afro-southern-ancestors… The work takes us on a lucid journey of self discovery and cultural reawakening after a young man inherits a mysterious box of objects following the passing of his grandfather in East Texas. Through recipes, flash fictions, images and poetry the audience is invited to reinterpret the sweet complexities of Blackness, the memories, the objects and rituals discovered on his journey.
- IRL AUTHOR TALK: Holy American Burnout! with Sean Enfield - March 21 @ 6:30 PM CST
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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: 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: This Could Be Us with Kennedy Ryan - March 10 @ 2PM
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IRL Author Talk: This Could Be Us with Kennedy Ryan - March 10 @ 2PM
Sold outCelebrate Kennedy Ryan's new book, This Could Be Us!
EVENT DEETS
When: Sunday, March 10 at 2 PM
Where: Eldorado Ballroom (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)
How: Purchase your ticket here! Each ticket comes with a copy of This Could Be Us. No refunds.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.
But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She's too busy keeping a roof over her daughters' heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.
But then an unlikely man enters the picture—the forbidden one, the one she shouldn't want but can't seem to resist. She's lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself?
After all she's lost . . .and found . . .can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?ABOUT THE AUTHOR
USA Today bestselling author and Audie Award winner, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Kennedy and her writings have been featured in USA Today, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Cosmo, TIME, and many others. The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has a passion for raising Autism awareness. She is a wife to her "lifetime lover" and mother to an extraordinary son.ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Wale Okerayi 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, writers and creative folks on a weekly basis.
As an avid reader and Kindred Stories aficionado, Wale has moderated various author talks featuring: Lyvonne Briggs, Sochil Washington, Tyriek White, Adorah Nworah, Dr. Joy, and Nicole Walters.
- IRL Author Talk: The Kiss Countdown with Etta Easton - April 9 @ 7PM
![IRL Author Talk: The Kiss Countdown with Etta Easton - April 9 @ 7PM]()
IRL Author Talk: The Kiss Countdown with Etta Easton - April 9 @ 7PM
from $0.00Celebrate the release of The Kiss Countdown with Etta Easton!
Event DEETS
When: Tuesday, April 9 @ 7PM CST
Where: Kindred Stories' Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP to reserve your seat and RSVP WITH BOOK to grab your copy and support our programming.
About the Book
A struggling event planner and a sinfully hot astronaut must decide if their fake relationship is worth a shot at happily-ever-after, in this starry debut.
Risk-averse event planner Amerie Price is jobless, newly single, and about to lose her apartment. With no choice but to gamble on her shaky start-up, the last thing she needed was to run into her smug ex and his new, less complicated girlfriend at Amerie's favorite coffee shop. Panicked, she pretends to be dating the annoyingly sexy man she met by spilling Americano all over his abs. He plays along—for a price.
Half the single men in Houston claim to be astronauts, but Vincent Rogers turns out to be the real deal. What started as a one-off lie morphs into a plan: for the three months leading up to his mission, Amerie will play Vincent's doting partner in front of his loving but overly invested family. In exchange, she gets a rent-free room in his house and can put every penny toward her struggling business.
What Amerie doesn't plan for is Vincent's gravitational pull. While her mind tells her a future with this astronaut is too unpredictable, her heart says he's exactly what she needs. As their time together counts down, Amerie must decide if she'll settle for the safe life—or shoot for the stars.About the Author
Etta Easton is a certified hopeless romantic who now writes contemporary romance. Her stories are full of humor, relatable heroines, swoon-worthy heroes, and Black joy. She lives in Central Texas with her husband and two young kids.
About the Conversation Partner
Naina Kumar is a lawyer by day and a reader and writer of romance at night. She lives in Texas, close to her family whose antics provide endless inspiration. When she’s not writing, she enjoys taking her rowdy rescue dog on walks, rewatching Gilmore Girls on a loop, and shopping at HEB. Say You’ll Be Mine is her debut novel.
- IRL Book Signing: Rest is Resisistance with Tricia Hersey - March 9 @ 6:00 PM
![IRL Book Signing: Rest is Resisistance with Tricia Hersey - March 9 @ 6:00 PM]()
IRL Book Signing: Rest is Resisistance with Tricia Hersey - March 9 @ 6:00 PM
Sold outCome have a cocktail and mocktail with Tricia Hersey, Founder of The Nap Ministry and author of Rest is Resistance!
EVENT DEETS
When: Saturday, March 9 @ 6PM - 7:30 PM
Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)
How: RSVP to help us prepare for your arrival or RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your copy of Rest is Resistance.
ABOUT THE BOOK
What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace –– feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit.
In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us.
Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey’s lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.ABOUT THE DECK
From Tricia Hersey, the celebrated founder of the Nap Ministry and author of the New York Times bestseller Rest Is Resistance, this deck of 50 powerful rest practices helps you embrace rest as a form of radical communal care and personal liberation.
"This is about more than naps. Rest is anything that allows you to connect your body with your mind."
The Nap Ministry's Rest Deck is a rousing call to reclaim rest in everyday life. Delivered in a stunning package with gold accents and gorgeous artwork throughout, the deck combines restorative meditations with prescient wisdom from celebrated activist and teaching artist Tricia Hersey, a.k.a. "the Nap Bishop," and founder of the Nap Ministry.
Readers will discover 50 inspiring cards, each with an empowering affirmation and a simple practice to encourage rest, care, and imagination. Rooted in social justice and imbued with spirituality, these cards offer short, accessible practices designed to uplift anyone suffering from the toxic effects of grind culture.
CELEBRATED AUTHOR: Tricia Hersey, a.k.a. "the Nap Bishop," is the founder of the Nap Ministry and the bestselling author of Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Her work as a social justice activist, artist, and thought leader has been featured by the New York Times, NPR, The Cut, and the Atlantic, among many others. In this deck, she distills her profound and celebrated teachings into 50 accessible practices.
TOOL FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: Brimming with practices to empower personal liberation as a step toward building a healthier, more just world, this deck offers readers a new way to engage with social justice and invites a wide audience to embrace the power of rest as an essential balm for our collective exhaustion.
BEAUTIFUL TO GIFT AND DISPLAY: This bold, eye-catching package with colorful illustrations and gold accents is a beautiful and meaningful gift for friends, activists, and anyone feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by the demands of grind culture.
- A powerful new tool for social justice activists
- Great gift or self-purchase for socially engaged millennials and Gen-Zers
- For anyone seeking mindful affirmation cards to aid their healing practice
- Perfect for fans of the Nap Ministry, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Layla Saad, Adrienne Maree Brown, Chani Nicholas, and Alex Elle
- For readers of Me and White Supremacy, I’m Still Here, and How to Do Nothing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tricia Hersey is an artist, poet, theologian and community organizer. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating sacred spaces for the community to rest via Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops, performance art installations, and social media. Tricia is a global pioneer and originator of the movement to understand the liberatory power of rest. She is the creator of the Rest is Resistance and Rest as Reparations frameworks. Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma. Tricia is a Chicago native and currently lives in South Georgia
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