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T Kira Madden

Biography

T Kira Madden

T Kira Māhealani Madden is a diasporic Kanaka 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) writer and author of the acclaimed memoir LONG LIVE THE TRIBE OF FATHERLESS GIRLS, which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. She is the Founding Editor of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Tin House, MacDowell and Yaddo. Winner of the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award, she is an assistant professor at Hamilton College in Creative Writing and Indigenous studies and served as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.

T Kira Madden

Books by T Kira Madden

Whidbey
by T Kira Madden - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes --- and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and now has resurfaced. But Birdie isn’t the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, Calvin’s mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers.

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir
by T Kira Madden - Memoir, Nonfiction

Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight. As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, but under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.