Tessera

T Kira Māhealani Madden

@tkiramadden.bsky.social

author: Whidbey & Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls • hapa kanaka ‘ōiwi dyke • soup enthusiast & magician • land back • aloha 'āina • she/her

205 Posts3752 Follower 1047 Folgt

Erin Dorney @erindorney.bsky.social · 3mo ago

If you're around Central/Western NY we'd love to see you next month at the inaugural BEACH READ featuring @dannycaine.com + @tkiramadden.bsky.social + Angelique Stevens! 🏖️☀️🏄‍♀️ www.fearnolit.com

Event flyer for Beach Read, a lit reading at Hamlin Beach State Part on Friday, August 21, featuring Danny Caine, T Kira Madden, and Angelique Stevens. The flyer shows a vintage illustration of a person about to jump into water.

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🤠🤠🤠

Oscar Villalon@ovillalon.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This Wednesday, join @ingridrojasc.bsky.social, @tkiramadden.bsky.social and myself for the first ZYZZYVA Movie Night of 2026! We'll be screening Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," and celebrating T Kira Madden's novel, "Whidbey." Get your tix here: roxie.com/film/zyzzyva...

ZYZZYVA, Litquake, and the Roxie present ZYZZYVA Movie Night with Ingrid Rojas Contreras, with featured film Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," as selected by author T Kira Madden. Wednesday, July1, at 6 p.m. at the Roxie in San Francisco's Mission District.

ZYZZYVA @zyzzyvamag.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Ready for ZYZZYVA Movie Night with @ingridrojasc.bsky.social? We are too! We’re back at Roxie Theater for a classic Hitchcock thriller + conversation with @tkiramadden.bsky.social 🎟️🎟️🎟️: l1nq.com/ajdj8xp

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Me on group texts // in voice notes to all my besties

ZYZZYVA @zyzzyvamag.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Movie night is back! We’re thrilled to return with Litquake for ZYZZYVA Movie Night with @ingridrojasc.bsky.social The first installment: @tkiramadden.bsky.social joins us to watch and discuss Alfred Hitchock’s Strangers on a Train. Tickets: tinyurl.com/4psr6py4

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Revolutionary Road is one of the greatest horror novels ever written (also, one of the greatest novels). Will always f with Yates & not enough people do.

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I think about that Secret Mall Apartment doc a lot

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 5mo ago

2018 first book me: always check your intentions while writing; write from a place of warmth, compassion, tectonic empathy 2026: my entire third book is an exercise in spite

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I love to be so gay I can proudly brag that our wedding intro/outro song was Tracy Chapman (and Mazzy Star for first dance)

Jan Stinchcomb @janstinchcomb.bsky.social · 7mo ago

"What they don't tell you is this: to live without fear is lonesome." T Kira Māhealani Madden, Whidbey #SundaySentence

Samantha Paige Rosen @samanthapaigerosen.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Profiled T Kira Madden for ELLE! Read not only for WHIDBEY BTS, but also for a true example of what committing to this writing life can look like—and how freaking fun it can be amidst all the hard work. www.elle.com/culture/book...

T Kira Madden Is Not the Dark Person You Might Expect

The Whidbey author’s process prioritizes play, even as she crafts deep, difficult stories.

elle.com

Poets & Writers @pw.org · 8mo ago

“I hope reading it feels like staring at the sun,” T Kira Māhealani Madden (@tkiramadden.bsky.social) says about her new novel, Whidbey, published by Mariner Books in March. “I want it to feel unbearable at times because I think that is truer to how life is…” Read more: at.pw.org/CrimeAndCompassion

Jaime Lee Kucinskas @jlkucinskas.bsky.social · 8mo ago

So thrilled @tkiramadden.bsky.social's new book is coming out! We are lucky to have her. Hamilton folks can go see her book talk next Thursday! www.harpercollins.com/products/whi...

Whidbey

A Most Anticipated Book by People • Vogue • Esquire • Harper’s Bazaar • USA Today • Seattle Times • Bookpage •Chicago Review of Books • Crimereads • Goodrea...

harpercollins.com

Ronnica Fatt @ronnicareads.bsky.social · 10mo ago

761/700 💙📚🖋️📚 📖: Whidbey by T Kira Madden Genre: Contemporary, Literary Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5 Thoughts: A very difficult, yet necessary read. I appreciate the highlighting of white women speaking over women of color, even while both face other harm. Thank you Mariner books for the review copy. #booksky

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · last yr.

should I come back to this app

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

imagine being stuck in space w katy perry

Kristen Iskandrian @kristeniskandrian.bsky.social · 2y ago

every book is like, what if the CLIMATE could HAVE SEX

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 2y ago

reposting with alt text and full text of Mahmoud Khalil's letter is available here, from @ccrjustice.org ccrjustice.org/sites/defaul...

Image with yellow-underlined text reading Letter from Mahmoud Khalil in ICE Detention
Swipe left

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana
Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention
March 18, 2025
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in
Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices
underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the
Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his
family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine,
only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me
as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what
was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern
was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her
for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my
arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early
morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the
ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free
Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s
ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced
to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle
for their complete freedom

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land
since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being
Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use
of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights.
I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned
home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was
taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For
Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate
my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism
that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has
continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For
decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to
violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being
targeted.

Center for Constitutional Rights@ccrjustice.org · 2y ago

Must read: Mahmoud Khalil speaks out for the first time since his arrest by the Trump administration in an exclusive letter, dictated over the phone to his family, from ICE detention in Louisiana.

Kristen Arnett @kristenarnett.bsky.social · 2y ago

book drops 3/18 and i have a fucking fantastic tour planned - will announce soon - but there is still time to get a preorder that’s signed and personalized by me from the good folks at the lynx thelynxbooks.com/item/ZoOPMvN...

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

A Novel

thelynxbooks.com

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

Do I have friends (friends of friends?) in Indianapolis? I’ll be reading at Butler tomorrow, free and open to the public 💗 www.butler.edu/arts-science...

Visiting Writers Series | Butler University

butler.edu

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

everything else aside, the *looks* of Milkshake 👩🏻‍🍳🤌🏽

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

My wife doesn’t know what happens in Part II of Wicked. Just sang a little “For Good” as a teaser and she stared, mouth open, then burst out crying.

R. O. Kwon 권오경 @rokwon.bsky.social · 2y ago

some forthcoming 2025 books by women of color I’m excited about!!! in this piece out today in @electriclit.bsky.social 🖤 electricliterature.com/48-books-by-...

48 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2025 - Electric Literature

Books by Zora Neale Hurston, Laila Lalami, Andrea Long Chu, Angela Flournoy, and EL's own Denne Michele Norris are among the most anticipated

electricliterature.com

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

hau’oli makahiki hou 💗 grateful to be home

Timothy F @tim0theos.bsky.social · 2y ago

This is correct. This is a land acknowledgment that I don’t hate. It acknowledges the facts and gives a chance to learn more and is doing something, anything, about it.

bekka leigh design operates on the unceded traditional territories of the Dunne-za, Saulteaux, Tse’khene, and nehiyaw nations, in Treaty 8 territory, and offers reparation rates on services to Indigenous clients. A link at the end says: Read why.

Timothy F@tim0theos.bsky.social · 2y ago

It is as an Indigenous person I say that I fucking hate your land acknowledgment.

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

in the spirit of xmas I have been reborn after the worst food poisoning in history

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

Day 14. Some will only talk about Brokeback Mountain (a miracle of a story) but every story in here is gothic, surreal, otherworldly, sometimes campy. I’ve read this book a million times. Listening to it on audio while driving through Wyoming while in love, top experience

T Kira Māhealani Madden@tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

Day 13. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about Heather Lewis. I wish she were still alive and still writing books. Her characters suffer so tremendously but they’re still alive, full of agency, sensuality, wanting. Fewer ppl have had greater impact on me, though I never met HL

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

T Kira Māhealani Madden@tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

Day 12. Can’t and won’t choose—both biblical to me

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

finally watched The Substance. It is Death Becomes Her meets Severance, no?

T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · 2y ago

this page of canned phrasing from @mdbell79.bsky.social’s Refuse to be Done is always so appreciated and always feels like an attack. Choose your fighter