Kristen Millares Young, journalist and novelist, is the author of a new feminist memoir, Desire Lines (2026), an exploration of her Cuban and Spanish matrilineal heritage, and a meditation on selfhood, motherhood, the feminine divine, and the possibilities for women’s liberation. 

Luis Alberto Urrea called it an “explosive and daring collection.” Melissa Febos said, “Young brings a searching, generous, and unrelenting gaze to every subject she writes on, most of all herself.” 

Her 2024 novel Subduction, about a Latina anthropologist who becomes enmeshed in the life of an indigenous whaling community in Washington State, was named a staff pick by The Paris Review, and was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards. 

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Cosponsored by the University at Albany’s Department of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, and by the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.​