*Ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days*

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.

Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.

Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.

Celebrate Taylor Byas' new poetry collection, Resting Bitch Face! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, September 4 @ 7 PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin Street, Houston, Texas, 77004) 

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and the bookstore!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Resting Bitch Face is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work that finds a middle ground between poetry and prose. Taylor Byas uses some of our most common ways of “watching” throughout history (painting, films, sculpture, and photographs) to explore how these mediums shape Black female subjectivity.

From the examination of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin, Sally Mann, and Nan Goldin, Byas displays her mastery of the poetic form by engaging in intimate and inventive writing. Fluctuating between watcher and watched, the speaker of these poems uses mirrors and reflections to flip the script and talk back to histories of art, text, photography, relationships, and men. From Polaroids to gesso primer to sculpture, Byas creates a world in which the artist calls out and the muse responds. For not only does she enter the world of the long-revered classic artist, but she also infuses her poems with such iconic pop culture works as The Joker, WandaVision, and Last Tango in Paris.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

TAYLOR BYAS is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor.

In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self actualization while remaining connected to a larger world of collective struggle, hooks articulates the link between self recovery and political resistance. Both an expression of the joy of self healing and the need to be ever vigilant in the struggle for equality, Sisters of the Yam continues to speak to the experience of black womanhood.

Merging waves of feminist thought from established and emerging Mexican women writers, Tsunami arrives with seismic, groundbreaking force.

Featuring personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures. Tackling gender violence, community building, #MeToo, Indigenous rights, and more, these writings rock the core of what we know feminism to be, dismantling its Eurocentric roots and directing its critical thrust towards current affairs in Mexico today. Asserting plurality as a political priority, Tsunami includes trans voices, Indigenous voices, Afro-Latinx voices, voices from within and outside academic institutions, and voices spanning generations. Tsunami is the combined force and critique of the three feminist waves, the marea verde (“green wave”) of protests that have swept through Latin America in recent years, and the tides turned by insurgent feminisms at the margins of public discourse.

Contributors include Marina Azahua, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Dahlia de la Cerda, Lia García, Margo Glantz, Jimena González, Fernanda Latani M. Bravo, Valeria Luiselli, Ytzel Maya, Brenda Navarro, Jumko Ogata, Daniela Rea, Cristina Rivera Garza, Diana J. Torres, Sara Uribe, and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

Celebrate the release of Never Tell A Black Girl How To Black Girl with Amena Brown!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, July 23 @ 7PM CST

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

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming. 

Please note that books purchased from other retailers are not permitted inside the bookstore and will not qualify for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must purchase a copy of the book from Kindred Stories.

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your copy. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A delightfully funny essay collection about growing up in the south, the pitfalls of date night, the things you wish you could say to your therapist, and why no one should ever tell a Black girl how to Black Girl.

Black women always find a place to meet: in the natural hair aisle, at Beyoncé concerts, even online in memes and catchphrases. This book is one of those places: a living room where readers can contemplate how a well-picked afro can defy the laws of physics and why boob sweat has to exist in the first place. Here, Black Girl is a verb. Here, Black women can Black Girl in every way we want to.

Brown’s book Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl blends storytelling, humor, and pop culture commentary to traverse the magic and wisdom she's gleaned from being raised by Southern Black women, and by being supported by the community of Black women who hold her down today. After graduating from International Black Girl Headquarters (the renowned HBCU Spelman College), Amena had built a career sharing stories and celebrating Black womanhood. In her book, she shares stories of dancing in Janelle Monae's Tightrope music video and partnering with Tracee Ellis Ross to compose odes to natural hair. She imparts essential life lessons from the Real Housewives of Atlanta, and from her grandmother before her upcoming swirl marriage (“Don’t kiss white boys too hard, because they bruise easily”). She also tells hair tales, sharing the collected wisdom from her committee of friends when it came to the ideal style for her first speaking gig at Essence Fest (box braids, 100%).

In the end, Brown shares that Black women are a whole world. A galaxy of customs, language, code, and unspoken understandings, all explored with humor and heart in this unforgettable book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amena Brown is a spoken-word poet and performing artist whose work interweaves keep-it-real storytelling with humor. She is the author of How to Fix a Broken Record and Breaking Old Rhythms. Her poetry was featured in the New York Times bestselling book Rhythm of Prayer. Brown was featured in Olay’s Face Anything campaign alongside Jennifer Hudson. She was also the poetic partner for PATTERN Beauty, Tracee Ellis Ross’s natural hair care and beauty brand. She lives in Atlanta.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Wale Okerayi is a licensed mental health therapist and a passionate literary enthusiast, uniquely blending her professional insights with her profound love for literature. Her work as a book influencer, particularly through her platform @theehottgirlbooks, focuses on celebrating and sharing BIPOC stories. Wale’s dual role enriches her contributions to both fields, making her a valuable voice in discussions around mental health and literature.

When she’s not reading or in the therapy room, you can find her building Lego sets and watching The Real Housewives. 

Let'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

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)

*ZOOM LINK*

Celebrate the release of The Wilderness with Angela Flournoy!

EVENT DEETS

When: Monday, October 6 @ 7PM

Where: 2310 Elgin Street, Unit 2, Houston, Texas, 77004

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming

Please note that only copies of The Wilderness purchased from Kindred Stories will be allowed in the signing line. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.

Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.

Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.

As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.

The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. In his observant, often hilarious work, Laymon does battle with the personal and the political: race and family, body and shame, poverty and place. His savage humor and clear-eyed perceptiveness have earned him comparisons to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alice Walker, and Mark Twain. He is the author of the award-winning memoir Heavy, the groundbreaking essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the genre-defying novel Long Division.

Laymon’s memoir Heavy won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. Heavy was also named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years and one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable—an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family. In a starred review, Kirkus wrote, “Laymon skillfully couches his provocative subject matter in language that is pyrotechnic and unmistakably his own…. A dynamic memoir that is unsettling in all the best ways.” Heavy was named a best book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year.