Next Letter in the Mail: Kristen Millares Young

Our next Letter in the Mail is from prize-winning journalist, essayist, and author Kristen Millares Young! Kristen writes to us about the importance of listening to the wisdomkeepers in our lives, why data points don’t always lead to good decisions, finding ways to anticipate beauty, and joy as rebellion.

To make sure Kristen’s gorgeously rendered, deeply felt letter finds its way to your mailbox, subscribe to Letters in the Mail by September 29! And remember, Letters in the Mail helps us keep The Rumpus running—so, you can correspond with your favorite writers and support the website in one fell swoop.

Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, a Paris Review staff pick called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post and “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times. Longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Subduction is a finalist for a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award and two International Latino Book Awards. A prize-winning journalist, essayist and editor of Seismic, Kristen was the 2018-2020 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House. Her work appears most recently in the Washington Post, Literary Hub, the Guardian, PANK Magazine and the anthologies Alone Together, Latina Outsiders and Advanced Creative Nonfiction. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer. From 2016 to 2019, she was board chair of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom she co-founded to serve vulnerable peoples and places of the Pacific Northwest. Kristen teaches the personal essay for the University of Washington Continuum College. As a 2021-2023 Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau presenter, she will offer a free writing workshop in English and Spanish to rural, migratory and marginalized communities of Washington state.

***

Photograph of Kristen Millares Young by Jenn Furber.