Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Whidbey by T Kira Madden, assistant professor of literature and creative writing.

October 14, 2026

Tags Faculty Book

(Harper Collins, 2026).

When Vogue magazine featured Madden’s bestselling novel earlier this year, the writer described it perfectly: “There is, to put it simply, no book quite like T Kira Madden’s Whidbey, a literary thriller that braids together the perspectives of three protagonists — two survivors of childhood sexual abuse and the mother of their recently deceased abuser — with skill and astonishing empathy. If it’s short on facile platitudes about what it means to live through something awful, it just might reconfigure your expectations about what it means to live at all.”

Named to several “most-anticipated” prominent fiction lists, Madden’s first novel is based in part on events from her personal life. The diasporic Kanaka '?iwi (Native Hawaiian) writer’s memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls (2019), was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award.