About

Here’s a formal-ish bio:

According to geographers, the American West begins at the 100th longitudinal meridian. Thanks to the fact that this meridian is the main street of her hometown in Nebraska, Kirstin Cronn-Mills grew up six blocks east of the West. According to her mother, she learned to read when she was three. She hasn’t stopped since.

Kirstin comes from a family of word nerds. Her grandmother and her father passed on their love of language to her, and that love became a love affair when she started writing poems in elementary school. She still writes poems, but now she focuses on young adult novels.

In 1992 Kirstin moved from Nebraska to southern Minnesota, where she lives now. She writes a lot, reads as much as she can, teaches at a two-year college, and goofs around with her family. Her first young adult novel, The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don’t Mind (Flux, 2009), was a 2010 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Young People’s Literature.  Her second novel, Beautiful Music For Ugly Children (Flux/Llewellyn, 2012), won ALA’s Stonewall Award in 2014 as well as an IPPY (Independent Publishing) silver medal for Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Fiction.  BMUC was also placed on ALA’s 2013 Rainbow List (as a Top Ten Pick) as well as their 2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults list.  Her third novel, Original Fake (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Random House 2016), was a Junior Library Guild selection and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. It was also a finalist for a 2017 Minnesota Book Award for Young Adult Literature and a 2017 Best Children’s Books of the Year selection from Bank Street College. Her fourth novel, Wreck, was published in 2019 by Skyhorse Publishing. Her fifth novel, Rules for Camouflage, will be published in June 2024 by Little, Brown Young Readers.

She has also published nonfiction books for middle and high school libraries: Collapse! The Science of Structural Engineering Failures (Compass Point Books, 2009), Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices (Twenty-First Century Books/Lerner, 2014) and LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality (Twenty-First Century Books/Lerner, 2016).  Transgender Lives was placed on the 2015 Best Children’s Books of the Year list from Bank Street College, and LGBTQ+ Athletes  Claim the Field was a Junior Library Guild selection, a 2017 American Library Association Rainbow List selection, a 2017 Best Children’s Books of the Year selection from Bank Street College, and a 2017 Minnesota Book Award finalist for Young Adult Literature. Gender Inequality in Women’s Sports: from Title IX to World Titles was released in April 2022.

*****

Some less formal things: Kirstin Cronn-Mills, author photo, blue hair

–This picture (which is at least ten years old now) makes me look like a fun person, which is 70% true.  The other 30% of me is a writhing mass of insecurity.

–I am really good at hyperbole and exaggeration, and I talk like a teenager way more than I should.  ZOMG!

–I don’t eat chocolate. I used to. Yes, I miss it. My favorite flavors are peanut butter, lemon, and strawberry.

–Speaking of lemon, I love lemon water, with bubbles or without. I usually drink it out of a quart jar, with a couple slices of lemon, and I used to do that at school, too (now I have a super cool metal water bottle covered in stickers, of course). People would ask me if it was moonshine, and my usual reply was “If you worked here, you’d drink too.” (I don’t drink alcohol, btw.)

–My day job is teaching at a community and tech college: literature, writing, and critical thinking. It’s exhausting. I love my students and my colleagues, but I get very little time to write. BOOOOOOO.

–I’m an ordained interfaith minister, and did my first wedding in April 2023. The Oneness loves you (I promise), Hell isn’t real, equity and justice matter 24/7/365, and we’re here to be kind to each other.

–I love watching soccer (football/futbol), though I used to love American college football (Go Big Red!) before the transfer portal wrecked everything, though I understand its purpose. I also have mixed emotions about American football, given all the damage players do to themselves.

–Related to that, I really loved being a soccer mom.  I love being a mom, period.  My kid is now in college, and is completely amazing (and funny AF).

–I love to play outside, winter or summer.  I love to play in the snow! I walk my dog every day for at least 1.5 miles (usually more), no matter what the weather is.

–If I don’t listen to music for a few days, I get droopy.  : (  Music is like blood or water–I need it in my veins.  What kind?  Almost any kind.  My list of favorites would take up this whole page.

–I’ve been to 12 foreign countries:  Ireland, England, Turkey, Greece, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Canada, Mexico, and Costa Rica (and Puerto Rico, which isn’t a foreign country but feels like it. Traveling is AWESOME.  My favorite place on earth is the Big Island of Hawaii, which is still America, even though you can get to Ireland, England, and Iceland in less time than it takes to get to Hawaii.

–I have four tattoos, two of which you can see on a summer day.

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