Celebrate 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.

Celebrate the release of Good Morning Means I Love You with Kendra Allen!

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, July 7 @ 7PM CST

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

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

Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A couple years after Noon and I fall in love, we fall in love with Micah—and a couple years after that, I have both of their babies. We choose, this land and this life. We share, ourselves and our sons. We name them, Morning and Night.”

In her arresting first novel, Kendra Allen investigates love, partnership, motherhood, pleasure and the pursuit of freedom in one young woman’s defiantly unconventional terms. Rae has just returned to her family after leaving for a stretch and suddenly – that family being her two male partners and the sons, named Morning and Night, that she has mothered with each of them. In the span of one year, they will experience unfathomable depths of devastation—and joys they could never predict.

Good Morning Means I Love You follows Rae as she makes choices around sex, mothering, and partnership that are as stunning to everyone else as they are natural to herself. With pain and pleasure, she watches as her children learn to walk and give language to the world as her lovers contend with their own ideas of masculinity, personhood, and fatherhood. Along the way, Rae begins to understand the hardest and most beautiful truth: that we have only so much time on earth to make love, to make family, and to make good on the promise of this one, short life.
This is a novel of the self in all its simultaneities and a living portrait of intimacy written in poetic, bold, and sensual prose that shines a light on what it means to redefine expectation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kendra Allen is the author of the memoir Fruit Punch, the poetry collection The Collection Plate, and the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, which won the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She writes to music column “Make Love in My Car” for Southwest Review. She was born and raised in Dallas. 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Kamisha Escoto, PhD, is a Lecturer at Rice University who teaches graduate students how to communicate complex ideas clearly through writing. By day, she works in engineering communication; outside the classroom, she's an avid reader who views fiction as a way to explore the human side of how we think and relate to one another. She enjoys literary fiction and is especially drawn to stories about friendship, identity, and emotional ambiguity. A native Houstonian, she reads widely across genres with her son (and often aloud to her dog). 

Celebrate the release of The Waterbearers : A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters with Sasha Bonet!

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, September 23 @ 7PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, #2, Houston, TX 77004)

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

Note: Outside copies of The Waterbearers will not be allowed in the venue. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A sweeping narrative of the unique beauty and trials of Black matriarchy in America that weaves a sharp, tender examination of three single Black mothers—the author's grandmother, mother, and the author herself—with stories of influential Black women in our culture

"Bonét tells the whole history of this country through the relationships of and between Black mothers and daughters."—Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

“Bonét dances on our hearts in this classic creation of will and wit. Electrifying... Wow.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

Betty Jean, the author’s grandmother, had a house along a bayou in Texas, a home paid for and run without a man by her side. This home served as the center of Bonét’s family’s universe, the one place that was a constant through all of life’s changes.

Mama Connie, one of Betty Jean’s eleven children, vowed that her life would be different. And in many ways it was: she got married, lived in suburbia, and built a life resembling the American dream. But when it came to raising children of her own, she was more like Betty Jean than she cared to admit. But, like her mother before her, Connie’s sweat was the founding salt of her own universe.

Today, Sasha Bonét navigates all aspects of being a mother—escape, promise, burden, assent, and rebellion—not just for the women in her family who came before her, but for Black women with whom society is acquainted, too: figures like Nina Simone, Betty Davis, and Darnella Frazier, who filmed the murder of George Floyd.

Generations of Black women have borne children, borne the burdens of events untold, and borne witness to unspeakable trials. The Waterbearers carries this history, its fierce eloquence capturing a masterpiece of life written by an author who is intimately acquainted with how Black women have passed down knowledge and culture. Sasha Bonét doesn’t just present genealogical lineages but illuminates the cultural and societal connections of strong Black women who have built legacies and changed the world, sometimes in the most mundane of moments. The fierce eloquence of this story confirms Sasha Bonét as a voice we all now need to hear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SASHA BONÉT is a writer and cultural critic based in New York City. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among other publications. Bonét is a professor of creative writing for Columbia University and Barnard College.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Amarie Gipson is a Houston-born writer, editor and cultural worker. She has held curatorial positions at various art institutions, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Independently, her writing has been published in ARTS.BLACK, Artforum, ArtNews, ESSENCE, Oxford American and many others. She previously held editor positions at Houstonia and Atlanta-based arts criticism publication Burnaway. In 2024, she was awarded the AICA-USA's Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism. Gipson is the Founder and Director of The Reading Room, an independent reference library dedicated to increasing access to Black art and culture through literature, print media and community engagement. Located in downtown Houston, The Reading Room hosts curated events, including artist talks, film screenings, and interactive workshops, all designed to foster a deeper connection to the library’s growing collection of over 700 books.

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.

From one of the first and few women of color to reach the c-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple's former chief of HR, co-creator of the Apple Store culture, and first VP of inclusion and diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.

From one of the first and few women of color to reach the C-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple's former chief of HR and first VP of inclusion and diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.

"You will enjoy reading this book and benefit as a business leader but mostly as a member of the human race."-Ron Johnson, business leader Apple, Target, JCPenney

For her work as a co-creator of the Apple Store cultural experience, Denise Young has been deemed by leadership experts as one of the most emotionally intelligent leaders of her era. In this stirring narrative, part-memoir, part blueprint for action, she shares her vision of what it means to be truly seen at our places of work. As a "first and only" woman of color in boardrooms and leading roles across the Bay Area's booming tech industry, Denise was a trailblazer in a business that was never built for her. The first black and female senior executive under both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Denise was often in "the room where it happened." But within a white male-centric professional culture, she still had to work harder, smarter, and differently to be heard.

In When We Are Seen, Denise shares insights on using your own story, empathy, and intuition to unlock the potential in yourself and others. Her story serves as both solace and strategy for anyone who has ever felt left out, unseen, or ostracized; anyone interested in upending cycles of exclusion; and for those interested in reclaiming our agency in the ongoing quest to thrive and belong.

Denise argues that bringing your truest self to work-from wearing your beloved locs to sharing your artistic passion-and, in turn, holistically seeing the attributes others have to offer is not a passive experience; it is a specific skill we can and should build. And the result is a deeper understanding of what it means to be inclusive and powerfully human on the job.

The first monograph on the Burkinabé photographer Sanlé Sory, whose unforgettable images capture a country at the dawn of its independence

In 1957, a teenager from a small village arrived in the Burkinabé city of Bobo-Dioulasso. Struck by the importance of ID pictures in this urban setting – and impressed by the prices photographers taking them could command – he learned the trade of shooting and processing photographs. Three years later, the same year Burkina Faso gained full independence from France, seventeen-year-old Sanlé Sory opened his own photo studio, Volta Photo.

Over the following three decades, Sory became one of the most renowned photographers in West Africa, respected for documenting slices of life in a rapidly changing social and political landscape. Along with the distinctive ID photos and laid-back outtakes he captured in his own studio, Sory was a dedicated chronicler of his city’s nightlife, creating a visual record of youth culture in Burkina Faso’s early post-colonial days.

This stunning book, the first monograph on Sory’s work, features more than two hundred of his arresting black-and-white photographs, including both studio portraits and nightlife photography. The book’s imagery is complemented by insightful texts, including an essay from Sory reflecting on his life and career. Created in close collaboration with the artist, Sanlé Sory is not only an essential volume for fans and collectors, but an immersive visual journey that transports readers into the exciting, vibrant world of post-colonial West Africa.

Rich with accessible, no-nonsense wisdom, this invaluable guide shows women how to utilize their leadership ability and maximize their potential in all areas of their life.

As “mentors in your pocket,” three successful Black women executives—Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, and Rhonda Joy McLean—share their strategies for playing, and ultimately winning, the power game in corporate America. This updated edition of their 2009 classic The Little Black Book of Success offers all corporate professionals—from college students to entry level employees, senior executives to global leaders—across all industries advice to help them find success. Covering topics like navigating unconscious biases and microaggressions, managing a global workforce, returning to the office after years of remote work, and the importance of self-care, this edition has been optimized for today's culturally and politically complex world.

Anchored in the wisdom of experience—navigating their own transitions from high-powered corporate jobs to becoming entrepreneurs, authors, public speakers, and community leaders—Brown, Haygood, and McLean share all they have learned (and wish they had known), so future generations of professionals can benefit and flourish at work and beyond.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A must-read for anyone who cares about their quality of life . . . Dr. Sharon Malone is the first person I turn to for a whole host of issues, especially my health.”—MICHELLE OBAMA

A practical guide to aging and health for women who have felt ignored or marginalized by the medical profession, from a leading OB/GYN and expert on menopausal and post-reproductive health

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

There’s not enough talk around women’s health, and what little there is rarely helps. Women are routinely warned, lectured, or threatened about their health. Or they are ignored, dismissed, or shamed. But they are rarely empowered. And empowerment, more than anything, is what women—and women of color, in particular—need.

Grown Woman Talk is for every woman who has felt marginalized or overwhelmed by a healthcare system that has become more impersonal, complex, and difficult to navigate than ever. It’s also for any woman who is simply standing at the intersection of aging and health, anxious and wanting solutions.

Part medical handbook, part memoir, and part sister-girl cheerleader, this book is filled with useful resources and real-life stories of victory and defeat. It not only highlights the current data around women’s health issues, but it also places that data in a helpful context.

In a tone that is lively and intimate but unflinchingly direct, Dr. Sharon Malone details how to live better, age better, and get better medical treatment, especially when it’s most needed. This is not a medical activism book designed to fight the power. This is a book designed to show women that they already have the power—they need only to increase their capacity and willingness to use it.

Most important, Grown Woman Talk seeks to eradicate the silence that surrounds women’s health by facilitating discussion between women of all ages and encouraging more accurate and productive medical insights. It is Dr. Sharon’s belief that giving women more agency can, literally, give them life.

Welcome to so-tiny-you'll-blink-and-miss-it town of Elaine for Christmas.

SUNDAY

Just days before Christmas, Sunday Conklin is on the brink of losing everything-her family's scenic farm-in the heart of her small Arkansas town. It's the legacy she's given up her life to protect. With the bank out of mercy and her options gone, her family's oldest enemy, the Adlers, will finally take the Conklin Fields for themselves. But a miracle arrives-one that could save Sunday, her neighbors, and the historic town of Elaine itself. There's just one problem: that miracle comes tangled up with the most infuriating man she's ever met... who belongs right back in Texas where he came from.

SEVEN

Seven Hardcastle can't believe his luck this Christmas, when he's assigned to a middle-of-nowhere Arkansas town. He's ready to return to his perfectly manicured life in Dallas with his wife and kids. All he needs is one signature-Sunday Conklin's. But when the town of Elaine strikes it big, Seven's fate is tied up with that of its most stubborn, maddening, and undeniably magnetic farm-owner. As the town's secrets unravel, and Sunday's fight becomes his own, Seven is handed a Christmas gift he never expected... one that forces him to question his past, his future, and where home truly is.

Note: This novel has been released in both a steamy edition that includes graphic intimacy and a clean edition that fades to black and is appropriate for ages 16+. This book is the CLEAN edition.

From New York Times bestselling author Tami Charles and her son, Chris Charles, comes a soaring and poetic celebration of the beautiful minds that make us all unique!

Some days it feels like my mind doesn't work right. Mom says otherwise. "That beautiful mind is what makes you unique."

This poetry-in-motion, sing-out-loud story follows the journey of one young boy as he navigates the challenges of his constantly running, brilliantly creative, and ever-so-busy brain. From basketball to baking with grandpa, to math class, and high-scoring video game conquests, readers will see that his one-of-a-kind mind is his greatest strength, and though challenges may come, he is all the stronger for it!

From bestselling author, Tami Charles, and her son, Christopher Charles, comes a rhythmic text that will speak to any child -- and every child -- who has needed an extra second or a second chance to harness the power of their own unique gifts and limitless potential. Stunning illustrations by New York Times bestselling artist Nikkolas Smith (I Am Ruby Bridges, Born on the Water) brings to life the joy, frustration, and triumph of navigating the world as a neurodivergent child. That Beautiful Mind celebrates the power and diversity of every child’s beautiful mind, and the dynamic and prismatic way so many children think and learn.

Includes the authors partial bibliography on the back.

New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory makes her highly-anticipated young adult debut with a Dirty Dancing-inspired contemporary romcom!

It's the summer before her senior year of high school and Kat (Kitty to her family) planned to spend it reading good books, working on her college applications, and enjoying her independence. Instead, she's stuck for an entire month with her family at a camp in the desert in Southern California.

When she stumbles across a staff party on the first night, she's jealous of their joyful, uninhibited dancing. She hasn't danced like that since two years ago, when she was forced to quit ballet, which she once loved more than anything. She's determined to leave dance where it belongs -- the past.

But Jordan, the handsome and magnetic hip-hop dance instructor, keeps dragging it into her present. As Kat begins sneaking around and lying to her parents to spend time with Jordan, she'll have to ask herself -- what is she willing to risk to finally feel free? And is it possible her feelings for Jordan could reignite her love for dance?