T Kira Madden

Madden has described herself "as a full-fucking-blown 50-footer lesbian". Of the queer material in her memoir, she has said, "I always knew I was gay, but I didn’t understand the knowing, and that feels really true to me...As much as I wanted to front load the book with queer material, this feels truer to how I lived it. It was always present and by my side but it was operating in a different plane."

"My mother, as a Chinese Hawaiian woman, was raised in a Mormon household with Buddhist grandparents. And my father is of course Jewish from Long Island. They always let me learn about every different religion, every culture. I went to temple, I went to church, we did Chinese New Year’s — we did everything. They told me: Wherever you find your place, that’s your place. We’re not gonna tell you where you belong. So that mix — which was confusing at the time — is something that was really part of my becoming [by] learning about all those different components of my identity."

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls was published in March 2019 from Bloomsbury. In Literary Hub, Madden describes it as "a coming-of-age memoir growing up in Boca Raton, Florida, in a very privileged Jewish community as a biracial, queer girl with a lot of family secrets: two addict parents and a famous family, as well."

In The New York Times, Tessa Fontaine said of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, "This is a fearless debut that carries as much tenderness as pain. The author never shrinks from putting herself back into the world after every hurt, and we are lucky for it...it’s all compulsively readable, not just because of those big themes, but because of the embodied, needle-fine moments that make the stories sing."

Kirkus Reviews said, "Though the author’s aching emotional rawness sometimes makes for difficult reading, this is a deeply courageous work that chronicles one artist’s jagged—and surprisingly beautiful—path to wholeness. Affecting, fearless, and unsparingly honest."

Madden has said that No Tokens was founded because "there was and is a need for more balance in publishing. There is a need for people to start paying attention, and I’m glad so many are. I admired what VIDA was doing; I admired many journals and publishers who said, 'We’re here. Look.' It is unacceptable to ignore the numbers, and I wanted to be a part of that response."

On editing, she's said "Being an editor sharpens the eye and ear, yada yada, of course, but really, if we’re talking artistic development, founding and editing a journal has taught me everything about generosity and community building. The longer I’m here, the more I believe those qualities matter as much as craft."