Celebrate The Day God Saw Me as Black with Passuh Danyelle! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, January 7 @ 7PM 

Where: 2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve you seat and signed copy! 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D. Danyelle Thomas is a Black faith and spirituality writer, speaker, and digital faith leader. The founder of Unfit Christian, her work and words have been featured in Essence, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Rewire.News, Splinter, and NBC News. She holds both a master's in Public Policy and a bachelor's in African American Studies from Georgia State University. She is on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) via @UnfitChristian

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Daphne (she/her) is passionate about helping people leave harmful and abusive situations so she shares her experience as a way to offer hope to others who may be in the same position. She created Golden Daph to share the things she's learning to refine her life and build it into something she's proud of. She shares what she's learned from her divorce, emotional and spiritual abuse, and her faith deconstruction and decolonization. She has found so much freedom on my journey and she hopes to share it with you.

In her day-to-day life you can find her working in the social justice field in Houston, Texas. When she's not doing that, you can find her spending time with family and friends, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, or watching reality TV shows. She's also a co-host of the Love is a Trip Podcast with her good sis Ash!

Through his work across many media, Houston and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez bears witness to the world around him, chronicling an America at the margins. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… features work from over twenty years and writings addressing Valdez's work through the lens of politics, history and humanity. Valdez's approach to imaging his country, its people, politics, pride, and foibles includes boxing, lynchings of Mexican Americans, border walls, politics, greed, the Ku Klux Klan, and the failings and triumphs of American society. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… accompanies survey exhibitions of his work by the same name at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (CAMH) in 2024-5 and MASS MoCA in 2025-6. The bilingual (English/Spanish) publication features both full-color works and a gatefold for The Strangest Fruit as well as a sewn-in booklet of behind-the-scenes studio images. Texts include a reprint of Joyce Carol Oates' On Boxing, essays by exhibition co-curators Denise Markonish and Patricia Restrepo; and a text by Evan Garza on the artist's relationship to Texas.

For all the girls in your life who are inspired, deserving, and worthy, bestselling author Marshawn Evans Daniels’ debut picture book Worthy Girl offers a lyrical, inspirational message about believing in yourself and realizing God’s higher purpose for your life.

From early on, young girls seek to find their place and voice in a complex world that tells them who they’re supposed to be. Worthy Girl uses soaring language to combat the forces trying to keep girls small and instead awaken their ambition and instill in them an unshakeable sense of self-worth, confidence, and identity bathed in possibility. This beautifully illustrated picture book anchors girls in God’s promises and challenges them to believe—even at a young age—that God made them for such a time as this.

Worthy Girl is perfect for:

* Any girl at any time, but especially for birthdays, graduations, and milestones that celebrate a girl’s life and potential.
* Parents desiring to inspire their daughters to embrace their uniqueness.
* Reassuring girls that God has a plan for their lives and there are limitless possibilities ahead of them.

Spring is in the air, and love is on the page. Join D.W. Brooks, Alexandra Lechelle, and Zee Renee at Kindred Stories for a celebration of local romance authors.

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, May 23 @ 6PM

Where: Kindred Stories: (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP WITH BOOK to support the authors and our store programming. There are four options available: you can choose to support an individual author or select the Romance In Spring Bundle, which includes one book from all participating authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

D. W. Brooks

D. W. Brooks  is an author who has independently published three romantic suspense books and two contemporary romance novels. In addition to writing books, D. W. is also a retired ophthalmologist and a kidney transplant recipient of over eight years. She is originally from Alabama but now lives in Texas with her husband and daughter.

Alexandrea LeChelle

Alexandrea LeChelle is a contemporary romance author whose stories explore love, grief, healing, and the complicated beauty of human connection.

Her novels unfold between Houston and Louisiana and center Black characters navigating family legacies, emotional vulnerability, and the quiet courage it takes to love deeply and unapologetically.

Through rich, emotional storytelling and cinematic detail, Alexandrea writes the kind of love stories she rarely saw growing up and entering adulthood. Stories where Black characters are allowed to be flawed, passionate, and deeply human.

What began as a way to process emotions and channel creativity through her own healing journey, slowly evolved into something much bigger: an urge to create and share stories about love, healing, and the complicated paths of life that bring people together.

Her stories often explore themes such as emotional healing, family dynamics, grief and growth, healthy Black love, the courage to begin again. Every story is planted in the belief that love, in all its forms, has the power to change us for the better.

When she’s not reading, Alexandrea can be found working her way through her own TBR, journaling or planning new creative projects, adding recipes to her personal cookbook, and listening to playlists that eventually inspire new stories.

At the heart of everything she creates is a simple hope: That readers will find pieces of themselves in her stories.

Zee Renee

Writing is where Zee thrives, finding peace and purpose. Her journey began at thirteen with a black-and-white composition book, later blossoming on Wattpad, where she captivated over two million readers. In December 2023, she released her debut novel, All In, and was nominated for the 2023 Black Girl Who Writes Best New Author award. By November 2024, Zee became a National Best-Selling Author with the release of When He’s Not There, her third book.

Crafting urban fiction and romance, Zee transforms raw emotions into powerful stories. Her characters are deeply personal, each carrying a piece of her spirit. She is grateful for the opportunity to share her God-given talent and hopes readers will feel the same passion in her words as she does in writing them.

Learn about the art of coming home to your body with Lyvonne Briggs!

EVENT DEETS

When: April 5 @ 7PM CST

Where: 3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX 77003 (Holy Family HTX)

How: RSVP ONLY to grab your free ticket or support our programming, author, and store by RSVP WITH BOOK. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lyvonne Briggs, MDiv, ThM, an Emmy Award winner, is a body- and sex-positive womanist preacher, speaker, coach, and creator. Briggs is the host of the Sensual Faith podcast and the founder of beautiful scars, a healing- centered storytelling
agency focused on fostering pleasure and resiliency; visionary of The Proverbial Experience; and now curator of Sensual Faith Sunday, a series of virtual spiritual gatherings to nourish your soul. She has been featured in Essence, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post, and Sojourners named her one of “11 Women Shaping the Church.” Briggs, a New York City native and proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, is currently based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Wale (@theehotgirlbooks)is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor working with folks in New York and Texas. She has a double masters degree in mental health counseling from Teachers College Columbia University. After practicing in New York for a few years, Wale moved back to her hometown Houston and started her own therapy practice in 2020. Wale currently works with individuals and couples on a weekly basis.

Join us to celebrate the release of Decent People with Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner, De'Shawn Charles WInslow & MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow, Kiese Laymon. 

EVENT DEETS

When: January 18 at 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden, 2304 Stuart Street, Houston, TX 77004

How: RSVP for a free ticket or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming. 

ABOUT DECENT PEOPLE

From prizewinning author De’Shawn Charles Winslow, a sweeping and unforgettable novel of a Black community reeling from a triple homicide, and the secrets the killings reveal.

In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina, in 1976, Marian, Marva, and Lazarus Harmon—three enigmatic siblings—are found shot to death in their home. The people of West Mills— on both sides of the canal that serves as the town’s color line—are in a frenzy of finger-pointing, gossip, and wonder. The crime is the first reported murder in the area in decades, but the white authorities don’t seem to have any interest in solving the case.

Fortunately, one person is determined to do more than talk. Miss Josephine Wright has just moved back to West Mills from New York City to retire and marry a childhood sweetheart, Olympus “Lymp” Seymore. When she discovers that the murder victims are Lymp’s half-siblings, and that Lymp is one of West Mills’s leading suspects, she sets out to prove his innocence. But as Jo investigates those who might know the most about the Harmons’ deaths, she starts to discover more secrets than she’d ever imagined, and a host of cover-ups—ranging from medical misuse to illicit affairs—that could upend the reputations of many.

For readers of American Spy and Bluebird, Bluebird, Decent People is a powerful new novel about shame, race, money, and the reckoning required to heal a fractured community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Encourage kids to find their unique voice and share it confidently with this inspirational story from Pentatonix (PTX) musical performer Kevin Olusola. A self-proclaimed "misfit," Kevin knows what it's like to be different, to have a talent others don't understand, and to find the courage to stand out.

On a regular morning getting ready for school, Kasey discovers that he can make some not-so-regular sounds with his mouth. Snares, cymbals, bass drums—he can do it all! With every beat, Kasey learns that his voice matters and to never stop sharing his gift with the world.

This upbeat and uplifting Own Voices picture book for 4 to 8 year olds . . .

* assures children that the things that make them different make them special;
* encourages kids to embrace their gifts and develop their talents;
* inspires readers to use their abilities and passions to make a difference; and
* includes an author's note from Kevin's heart about how he found the courage to be the perfect kind of different that God made him to be.

With bright, energetic art and lots of fun, rhythmic sounds, this affirming book tells kids that they are not alone and that the world needs who they were created to be.

WE'RE BACK BABY!!!!!!!!!!!

Join us for the 3rd Buzzed Adult Spelling Bee presented by Babe Events and Kindred Stories!

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, February 24 @ 7 PM (Doors open at 6 PM)

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: There are two different ticket options. If you would like to attend, purchase your ticket as an attendee. If you would like to contest for the cash prize, grab your ticket as a contestant. Both tickets come with two drinks. THIS EVENT IS FOR ADULTS (21+) ONLY! 

Tickets are final sale. You will be allowed to transfer tickets to guests.

ABOUT THE SPELLING BEE 

Contestants will be asked to spell words that speak to the theme of Black History Month including slang and AAVE over the course of four rounds. If you misspell the word, you are out!  As the words get harder, you might be able to Phone a Friend or Battle to earn your place back into the competition. Fun and music-filled, this event is for folks looking for something BLACKITY BLACK to do on a Saturday night! 

Be mindful that you don't have to participate in the Bee. We definitely need an audience! 

Contact lanise.harris@gmail.com or chanecka@kindredstorieshtx.com for more details.

WE'RE BACK BABY!!!!!!!!!!!

Join us for the 4th Buzzed Adult Spelling Bee presented by Babe Events and Kindred Stories, sponsorship by the Third Ward Cultural District and Brugal 1888!

EVENT DEETS

When: Sunday, February 16 @ 6 PM (Doors open at 5 PM)

Where: Eldorado Ballroom (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)

How: There are two different ticket options. If you would like to attend and enjoy the show, purchase your ticket as an attendee. If you would like to contest as the spelling bee champ, grab your ticket as a contestant. Both tickets come with three drinks. THIS EVENT IS FOR ADULTS (21+) ONLY! 

Tickets are final sale and non refundable. You will not be allowed to transfer tickets. 

ABOUT THE SPELLING BEE 

Contestants will be asked to spell words that speak to the theme of Black History Month including slang and AAVE over the course of four rounds. If you misspell the word, you are out!  As the words get harder, you might be able to Phone a Friend or Battle to earn your place back into the competition. Fun and music-filled, this event is for folks looking for something BLACKITY BLACK to do on a Sunday night! 

Be mindful that you don't have to participate in the Bee. We definitely need an audience! 

Contact lanise.harris@gmail.com or chanecka@kindredstorieshtx.com for more details.

Attend a grief focused writing workshop with award winning author, Renee Watson in honor of the release of All the Blues in Sky! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, February, 11 @ 7PM

Where: 2310 Elgin 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

Sage's thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn't predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life—and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.

In accessible, engaging verse and prose, this is a story of a girl's journey to heal, grow, and forgive herself. To read it is to see how many shades there are in grief, and to know that someone understands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel, Piecing Me
Together, received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include
the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma
Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, cowritten with
Ellen Hagan, and Love Is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Maya's Song,

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, written with Nikole Hannah-Jones, A Place Where
Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem's Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP
Image Award. Renée splits her time between Portland, Oregon and New York City.
http://www.reneewatson.net | @harlemportland (Instagram) | @reneewauthor (X)

Join us for the official launch event of Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood & Myth with author, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton and artist, Delita Martin. 

Event DEETS

When: March 7, 2023 at 7PM CST

Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX 77004)

How: Please RSVP reserve your spot. Checkout for RSVP with Book to support our store and the author/artists. 

About Black Chameleon

In the literary tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, this debut memoir confronts both the challenges and joys of growing up Black and making your own truth.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

Mouton writes, “The phrases of my mother and grandmother began to seem less colloquial and more tied to stories that had been lost along the way. . . . Mythmaking isn’t a lie. It is our moment to take the privilege of our own creativity to fill in the gaps that colonization has stolen from us. It is us choosing to write the tales that our children pull strength from. It is hijacking history for the ignorance in its closets. This, a truth that must start with the women.”

Mouton’s memoir is a song of praise and an elegy for Black womanhood. With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America. Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form.

About Deborah DEEP Mouton

Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally known writer, educator, activist, and performer and the first Black poet laureate of Houston, Texas. She was formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (PSI). Her recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination, was named a finalist for the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and received an honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. Its German translation, under the title Berichtenswert, was released in Summer 2021 by Elif Verlag. The opera Marian’s Song, for which she wrote the libretto, debuted in 2020. 

About Delita Martin

Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and an MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at UA Little Rock in Arkansas, Martin currently works as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. Martin’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently Martin’s work was included in the State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now, an exhibition that included 101 artists from around the United States. Her work is in numerous portfolios and collections.

Inspire the next generation of changemakers with this celebratory biography anthology of 52 Latine and Hispanic heroes.

All children deserve to see themselves positively represented in the books they read. This belief underpins the See Yourself in Their Stories biography series that brought you the critically acclaimed, bestselling Young, Gifted and Black. In Bold, Brilliant and Latine, young Latine and Hispanic children can see themselves reflected in 52 heroes from the past and present, whom everyone can look up to.

From sporting legends to fashion icons, political leaders to fearless changemakers, as well as renowned writers, musicians, artists, scientists, and more, these heroes’ lives are vividly recounted by queer award-winning Dominican and Puerto Rican storyteller Alyssa Reynoso-Morris and brought to life by Argentinian illustrator Sol Cotti’s artwork. Kids will find motivation in the stories of:

* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – Politician, youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress
* Lionel Messi – Superstar soccer player
* Sonia Sotomayor – US Supreme Court Justice
* Frida Kahlo – Iconic artist
* Cesar Chavez – Activist and labor leader
* Ellen Ochoa – First Latina astronaut in space
* Lin-Manuel Miranda – Actor, composer, creator of Broadway musicals

A heartwarming and empowering book for Latine and Hispanic children and families, this anthology is also ideal for homeschoolers and educators looking to diversify their perspectives through Latine and Hispanic history and achievements, with one new figure to explore each week of the year.

Proud, talented, and boundless, these extraordinary men and women will inspire readers of all backgrounds to chase their dreams…whatever they may be.
 
Also available from the series: Young, Gifted and Black; Young, Gifted and Black Too; Baby Young, Gifted and Black; and Shining Bright, Shining Black.