T Kira Madden
T Kira Madden is an APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the founding editor-in-chief of No Tokens and facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. A 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction literature, she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, and Yaddo, among others. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
MFOB FEATURED BOOK: Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
T Kira Madden’s raw and redemptive 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 privilege, racial disparities, white-collar crime, and destructive beauty standards hiding in plain sight.
As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her designer shoe-brand name, but her parents battled drug and alcohol addictions. Madden confronted her unstable environment alone, finding lifelines in loving friendships of fatherless girls.
With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawaii to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It’s a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.
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