Fleeing the shattered remains of her marriage and a betrayal by her sister, in the throes of a midlife freefall, Latina anthropologist Claudia Ranks retreats from Seattle to Neah Bay, a Native American whaling village on the jagged Pacific coast. Claudia yearns to lose herself to the songs of the tribe and the secrets of her guide, a spirited hoarder named Maggie. But when, spurred by his mother’s failing memory, Maggie’s prodigal son Peter returns seeking answers to his father’s murder, Claudia discovers in him the abandon she craves. Through the passionate and violent collision of these two outsiders, Subduction portrays not only their strange allegiance after grievous losses but also their imperfect attempts to find community on the Makah Indian Reservation.

Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction (Red Hen Press). A prize- winning journalist and essayist, Kristen serves as Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle. Her reviews, essays and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Poetry Northwest, and the anthologies Pie & Whiskey, a New York Times New Notable Book, Latina Outsiders and Advanced Creative Nonfiction. She was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon, where she was awarded the Dan Kimble First Year Teaching Award for Poetry. Her work appears in Miramar, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review and Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond.

Brittany Ackerman is the author of The Perpetual Motion Machine, winner of the 2017 Nonfiction Award from Red Hen Press. She teaches Archetypal Psychology at AMDA College and the Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Hollywood. Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, Entropy, Cosmonauts Ave, Fiction Southeast, and elsewhere.

Alexandra Teague is the author of the poetry collections Or What We’ll Call Desire, The Wise and Foolish Builders and Mortal Geography, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the California Book Award, and the novel The Principles Behind Flotation. She co-edited Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. A former Stegner and NEA fellow, and recent fellow at Civitella Ranieri, Alexandra is a professor at University of Idaho.

Skylit: Kristen Millares Young with Lory Bedikian, Brittany Ackerman and Alexandra Teague