Coffee Table on KBBI

Listen to the Coffee Table discussion held on August 20th with members of the Storyknife cohort and Executive Director Erin Hollowell.

Alisa Alering is the author of the novel “Smothermoss,” (Tin House, 2024) a Shirley Jackson Award finalist that the New York Times Book Review calls “deliciously weird…a compulsive journey through a wild, unknowable landscape and the wilder hearts of young girls.” A former librarian and science and technology reporter, they grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. They find the natural world equal parts comforting and terrifying.

Stephanie Brown is a Black speculative fiction writer creating stories about Earth and space, home and the unknown. Her stories have been published in Augur Magazine and Astral: Alien Fiction. She holds an MFA in English and was named the 2025 Mary Ellen State Fellow at Storyknife Writers Retreat.

Cherilyn Chin is a marine biologist, children’s book author and freelance science journalist. She has an award-winning ocean conservation blog, Ocean of Hope. Her life purpose is to bring to light the plight of our oceans and to reconnect people to nature. 

Geeta Kothari edited ‘Did My Mama Like to Dance?’ and Other Stories about Mothers and Daughters, and she is the author of I Brake for Moose and Other Stories. Her most recent essay, “To the Man who Poisoned My Mother,” was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2022.

Amy Ludwig lives in Los Angeles. Her stage adaptation of Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” has had over 35 productions nationwide. As a director in Chicago, she developed numerous new plays and created original site-specific works. She is writing a historical play to be performed with lantern slides.

A prize-winning journalist and essayist, Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review. Deemed “whip-smart” by the Washington Post and a “brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards. Red Hen Press will release her memoir Desire Lines on October 6, 2026.