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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Thanks SO MUCH to @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social for including UNITED STATES OF REJECTION on its “Our Favorite Books of 2026 (So Far)” list!!! Thanks for reading it with such care! Link below: chireviewofbooks.com/2026/07/07/o...

“[USoR] really isn’t only one of the best books I’ve read this year, but it’s also one of the most important. It’s about personal and political rejection, the impact that has on individuals and groups of people, and challenges the narrative that rejection makes us resilient. Have I mentioned the humor? Because despite tackling heavy topics, this thoughtful and well researched book is delightfully engaging, and one I highly recommend readers check out.”

Chicago Review of Books: "Our Favorite Books of 2026 (So Far)"
By Editorial Staff
July 7, 2026
At the halfway point of the year, CHIRB editors pick their favorite books so far

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I'm so sorry to have to cancel what was going to be a great reading with amazing writers at Green Apple Books in San Francisco on Monday! I've been sick for a few weeks, but the last few days have been horrible, and I can't sit in an airport, let alone fly.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Next week in San Francisco, a group reading to celebrate the launch of my book UNITED STATES OF REJECTION with @tdorabji.bsky.social @xtinehlee.bsky.social @gracelp.bsky.social & Joyce E. Young! Tuesday, June 30 (7pm) Green Apple @booksonthepark.bsky.social , 1231 9th Ave. RSVP link below!

Green Apple Books presents: Alison Kinney, UNITED STATES OF REJECTION, featuring: Tara Dorabji, Christine H. Lee, Grace Loh Prasad & Joyce E. Young. Tuesday, June 30, 7pm. 1231 9th Ave (Inner Sunset). RSVP at Greenapplebooks.com

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KQED Forum @kqedforum.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

🎙️ON AIR: We're talking to @alisonkinney.bsky.social about the power dynamic behind rejection. Her new book is “United States of Rejection: A Story of Love, Hate, and Hope." ❓Have you experienced a rejection that felt unjust or political? 📻 Listen:

buff.ly

It’s Not Personal: When Rejection Gets Political | KQED

Beyond the personal experience of rejection is a power dynamic worth interrogating, argues author Alison Kinney.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Having loved Tommy Pico's NATURE POEM, I went back to read his first book, IRL. I highlighted so many moments (odyssey across Williamsburg, horrid bar conversation, Brooklyn backyard fireworks party that yields moonwalking and his grandmother and the residential schools).

Cover of Tommy Pico's IRL with award stickers and photo collage portrait?

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Gabriel Liston @lastwater.net · 06/10/2025

Was painting. Got sidetracked by pastels and kaiju.

A rough, bright pastel sketch of trump from a video, mouth open, palms out, probably saying something about Portland burning, as the inflatable-suit frog from the Portland ICE protests looms up close behind him.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

I thought I'd posted about reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's THE SERVICEBERRY, but I hadn't, so just in time for Indigenous Peoples' Day, here was the first book I read this past summer, as soon as I could rest from other obligations!

cover of Robin Wall Kimmerer's book the serviceberry: ecru rough paper with illustration of cedar waxwings eating ripe berries on branches.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Today in book joy: For years I've been assigning Audre Lorde's epilogue to her collection, A BURST OF LIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS; I wanted my students to know who first defined self-care--"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."

cover of "A Burst of Light and Other Essays," a color drawing portrait of Audre Lorde

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Today in book joy (and heartbreak): It's hard to choose among all the heartbreaks in Naomi Shihab Nye's 2019 THE TINY JOURNALIST. In the poem "Janna," "At 7, making videos. /At 10, raising the truth flag," Nye writes in the voice of the eponymous tiny journalist:

Book cover for Naomi Shihab Nye's THE TINY JOURNALIST: POEMS: an impressionistic cityscape, maybe Mediterranean, maybe, who knows, Texan?

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Today in book joy: When I finally read Jodi Savage's essay collection THE DEATH OF A JAYBIRD this summer, I was struck over and over by the craft. The entire work is incisive, witty, unflinchingly honest, and just as unflinchingly, deeply compassionate, without a trace of sentimentality.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Today in book joy: I've been teaching the first chapter of Julie Otsuka's THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC in my Bodies of Water course for the first of two units on border crossings and immigration; this summer I devoured the whole novel over two evenings.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I first loved Marcos Gonsalez's brilliant critical essays on membership in communities that are LGBTQ+, Mexican and Puerto Rican, undocumented folks and U.S. citizens. PETRO'S THEORY: REIMAGINING THE PROMISED LAND turned my mind toward the theorizing of vulnerabilities.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Today in book joy/reflection: Miller Oberman's THE UNSTILL ONES. When I got to his translation of "The Ruin," these lines just took my breath away. "The repairers died." What happens to a culture, a world, when the repairers die, when there are no more generations to make things right again?

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

I've been using excerpts from Alexis Pauline Gumbs's UNDROWNED for years, ever since it was first taught to me by the great ecocritic (and my former student) Quinn Luthy. "This section looks at the revolutionary parenting and community-care practices modeled by marine mammals....

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

For the foreseeable future, book recommendations: I'm just going to post the most delightful and illuminating books I've read this summer and fall. First: Randa Jarrar, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Over on Instagram I posted a remembrance of Morgan Lopez, a writer, dancer, and former student of mine, who graduated from Lang in 2020 and left us too soon. www.instagram.com/p/DN5wbJkDcmo/

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

As a writer whose book treats the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence at length (Adams! Paine!), I feel cheated out of my best chance so far at the #NEA grant! I was so looking forward to thanking the NEA for accidentally funding my anti-Trump anti-fascist anti-white supremacist rejection book!

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

The destruction of seed banks is about destroying viability for generations. Perpetuating hunger for generations, destroying biodiversity and systems developed over millennia, destroying relationships between people and land. It's not unlike salting the earth. viacampesina.org/en/2025/07/i...

viacampesina.org

Israeli Forces Demolish Seed Multiplication Unit of UAWC’s Seed Bank in Hebron | Via Campesina

Agroecology, Biodiversity and Peasants' Seeds In a grave escalation of its assault on Palestinian agricultural sovereignty, food sovereignty and Indigenous Seed Heritage, Israeli military forces carri...

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

In my garden right now: Ozark witch hazel "Amethyst." The entire tiny tree is only about a foot tall; you don't notice it walking by, till you do.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Rescued sea turtle, photo by Michael Brady who is on no social media whatsoever.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Seen at NJ Transit. If I were NJ Transit, maybe I'd think twice about volunteering comparisons of service quality between me and...well, anybody, let alone Harriet Tubman.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

The garden had a rough time this fall with the drought, but it still managed to bring out a little fall color. The itea (red/purple foreground) is a gift that keeps giving.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I tend to make pot pies for Friendsgiving. This was 8 years ago. I didn't think I'd need to save the puff pastry letters for another time around. The resistance requires more pastry!

Two vegan pot pies with "FUCK TRUMP" in rough puff pastry. There's some gravy leakage.

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I passed my post-probationary review last spring and go up for tenure this spring. The process requires 10 lengthy letters of support from other creative writers who have to review my 300pp+ dossier. Problem: some people have already reviewed and written letters for my first 300pp+ dossier...

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Nicole Əntēbī @antwithacapitala.bsky.social · 13/10/2024

My animated essay for The Texas Observer:

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Reposted by Alison Kinney

Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 16/11/2024

The publication with 15 columnists who all share the same 3 takes every week are very concerned that this place might be an echo chamber

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Alison Kinney @alisonkinney.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

"Word up!" It is I, the Gray Lady, with a "shoutout" to all my hip young friends. *Not actually the Gray Lady

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