When seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds witnesses a violent clash between a protesting tree sitter and a local logger, she is forced to flee the California town she grew up in. Jade runs as far as she can from the battles that plague her home and from the mysteries of the redwood forest, but the ancient redwoods are embedded in her psyche—she feels their call even in the dark and forgotten back alleys of Portland, Oregon where she’s hiding out. She soon becomes entangled with a lovable misfit and a band of radical slackers, environmentalists, and anarchists, and finds herself living 100 feet high in the canopy of a redwood grove, trying to decide whose side she’s on: the logging community she’s known her entire life or the environmentalists who are risking their lives for the future of the forest. When choosing sides only makes matters worse, Jade turns to the ancient trees themselves—and the thread-thin web that connects us all. (Spark Press, 2018)

  • WINNER 2018 - International Book Awards in Fiction

    FINALIST 2019 - NextGen Indie Book Awards: Regional Fiction

    Every Day is Earth Day: 365 Books to Create Your Climate Change Library — LitHub

    One of 5 Books to Read to Prep for Earth Day – BuzzFeed

    One of 10 Books to Keep You Woke in 2018 – Bookstr

    “In brilliantly onomatopoeic prose, Kaye shows how Jade comes to several epiphanies about her tree dreams while also coming to know the people that her family considers enemies. Throughout, the author relates the protagonist’s tale of redemption in delightfully sparse language, like a long poem in which small details matter, every word counts, and images are so cogent that they anchor readers in the fictive reality like tree roots . . . A superbly written tale filled with realistic, engaging, and quirky characters.” — Kirkus Reviews

    “Kristin Kaye’s coming of age novel artfully places her young heroine in the midst of the burning questions facing the entire world, such as climate change and culture wars. At the same time, she manages to weave her into a discovery of the ancient human connections to both trees and dreams. This is a work of wit and imagination that informs as it inspires; it also marks a trail of encouragement for the mutual lives of people and trees.” — Michael Meade, author of The Genius Myth and Why the World Doesn’t End

    Tree Dreams is a touching coming-of-age novel about a budding environmentalist, the seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds. After witnessing a violent incident involving a logger and a tree hugger, the protagonist joins a band of radical environmentalists who live in the forests of Oregon. This is a great read for adults and teenagers alike. — Amy Brady for LitHub‘s list Every Day is Earth Day

    Kaye’s first novel captures the way a teenager sees the world while also giving Jade a unique voice….Jade’s tree dreams weave her reverence for nature with the fraught and tenuous webs that connect all of us to it. Through her, readers feel the sway of the big trees, how they move “with so many other things, like another language.” — Booklist

    “As much as Tree Dreams pulses with the ancient call to find our way home, Kristin Kaye’s story of loss and redemption is also fresh, edgy and thrilling. Her prose inhales and exhales and speaks to the best in us, reminding us that sometimes we must face an ache rooted deeply inside. We must risk everything, including our identity and comforts, to find the truth we are searching for.” — Maura Conlon-McIvor, author of FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father’s Code

    “The big question was: how do I write an internal conversation with a tree that sounds like a two-way conversation? How do you give language to a mostly mystical experience?” - GrottoPod Episode 86: Kristin Kaye On Writing Mystical Experiences

Tree Dreams: A Novel

At age twenty-three and fresh out of drama school, Kristin Kaye landed her dream job: to write and direct a Broadway show in New York City. Its title? The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World, starring twenty-five of the world’s most muscular women. Her mandate? To turn The Celebration into a High Art Happening exalting women’s physical and intellectual strength.

Kaye thought this was her chance to enter a whole new feminist arena, but in reality she was about to enter another world entirely: her carefully orchestrated artistic interludes would be sandwiched between skits involving white lace thongs, smoke machines, and a bodybuilder spinning by her neck. Kaye tells the whole story in this hilarious book, alternating between an account of directing the show, which builds to the disastrous climax of opening night, and reportage on women’s bodybuilding and the little-known sub-culture around it, including the use of steroids, the side business of strong women who wrestle men for money, and the judging controversy that threatens to split the sport in two. (Avalon/ Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005. eBook released 2015)

  • FINALIST - 2006 Oregon Book Awards

    One of five new titles for women who resist easy definition. - Utne Reader

    The history of women’s weight training rounds out this sassy, poignant memoir . - Utne Reader

    Not long out of college and trying to figure out what to do with her life, Kristin Kaye found herself writing and directing a Broadway show about female bodybuilders. In telling the tale of this show and the women who were in its cast, she persuades us of their humanity while at the same time showing the less appealing aspects of women’s bodybuilding. Kaye tells her own story honestly and amusingly, but always keeps the bodybuilders at the center of the stage. - Oregon Book Awards Judge Jonathan Yardley

    HUNKETTES: No discussions of female victimhood the other night at Roseland. Just two dozen women bodybuilders, very pumped up. - Arnold Roth, ‘The Talk of the Town’ column for The New Yorker

    Kaye weaves the story…in an earnest, idealistic and endearing way….- Jeff Baker, The Oregonian

    First-rate author Kristin Kaye deserves admiration for her immense, unflinching bravery in writing Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World. With deft writing skill and gripping momentum, she bared her evolving personal and professional raw self, exposing every hope, every delusion, misjudgment, rationalization and grief in the rarified experience of her first big break – writing and directing a Broadway show. The pain of her tough and bizarre journey is exquisite, and yet she unfolds the tale in such an engaging way that she allows you to laugh at it all, even eggs you on with her wounds gaping open…On top of this steady, jading, black humorist perspective is an equally naked stare into the wild world of professional female bodybuilding… - ‘Iron Maidens Makes Weight,’ by Kat Ricker

    Kaye weaves together the story of her bittersweet directorial debut/meltdown with a darkly humorous look into the world of female bodybuilding [and has] also ended up creating the most up-to-date journalistic history of the sport available.- The Willamette Week

    Kristin Kaye was a wide-eyed 23 year-old fresh out of drama school in 1993 when she responded to a classified ad that read: “administrative assistant wanted for exciting women’s project.” What she didn’t know at the time was that the project was a Broadway show entitled “The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World,” the brainchild of bodybuilder and writer Laurie Fierstein. Kaye ended up getting hired as the show’s director and had just six weeks to put it together. Iron Maidens is her funny, readable account of what followed: a regular girl’s journey into the world of women’s bodybuilding…Kaye has moved beyond her initial shock and bafflement at female bodybuilders, through fascination, to genuine admiration for them. Hopefully, a lot of readers will do too…- GeneX Magazine

Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World

Work in the World

PURCHASE A TREE DREAMS KIT

Tree Dreams

When I was writing my novel, Tree Dreams, the idea for tree tagging seemed to leap from the pages and into the world.

I collaborated with Portland-based design collective Cumbersome Multiples to create tree tagging kits, which include tags, twine and Tree Dreams: A Field Guide to the Nature of Interconnection. The Field Guide is a small book of facts about trees and forests, quotes about stewardship and ideas about the myriad ways we are connected to the natural world, to each other and to our future.

Since we made the first tagging kits in 2012, Tree Dreamers from around the world have been tagging trees with their dreams of interconnection and sharing photos of their tags on social media and on treedreams.net.

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” ~Yoko Ono

Tree Dreams Tree Tagging Campaign

DOWNLOAD FREE LESSON PLANS & NOVEL DISCUSSION GUIDE

Tree Dreams

Tree Dreams has been adapted for science, english, environmental ed and interdisciplinary classes. A generous grant from the Panta Rhea Foundation enabled the creation of standards-aligned lesson plans for K-8 and novel discussion guides for high school and college students and book groups.

Tree Dreams: A Novel and tree tagging lesson plans are recommended environmental education resources by Project Learning Tree. And Tree Dreams has even gone on tour with the circus—the Tree Circus that is.

I have hosted Tree Dreams events and taught workshops across the U.S. including at the American Library Association, National Science Teachers Association, North American Association of Environmental Educators, California Academy of Sciences, California Association of Environmental & Outdoor Educators, Delaware Green Schools Alliance and at the Young Artists Institute at Southern Oregon University.

It has also been a great joy working as a mentor with ISNAD-Africa in their Environmental Education Programme and sharing Tree Dreams and the tree tagging campaign with their Eco Heroes in Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, Kenya and other African countries.

Tree Dreams in Schools

As part of my research for Tree Dreams, I took Urban Forestry 101, trailed arborists who climbed and measured trees of each species for the National Big Tree Registry and I had the benefit of learning about forest management from Peter Hayes, owner of Hyla Woods.

All of this inspired Duff Dinners, a supper salon held in the woods of Oregon. We hosted periodic forest feasts to celebrate the living history and the ours-to-shape future of our forests — both urban and rural.

The series took inspiration from the farm-to-table movement that supports local farmers. We learned that our forests and local foresters need the same attention and support as our friends in agriculture.

Our hosts were foresters who were forging a new future for our forests, writers who write about our connection to land and chefs who create feasts sourced from local farms and forests. The goal was to gather people, trees, words and food and we found that when you get them all together, the conversation keeps on going long after dinner is over.

Duff Dinners

Client Projects

American Buddha: How a Christian Minister Discovered Her Spiritual Destiny, by Mary Ann McGuire

American Buddha is Mary Ann McGuire’s lively and insightful memoir of her physical, psychological, and spiritual voyage towards enlightenment. Set in Northern California and the spiritual sanctuaries of the majestic Himalayas, her book resounds with wisdom’s voice of truth. Buddhism teaches that the innate nature and pure qualities of all are serene and soothing. Welcoming the ups and downs of life’s journey, which soar with the birds and swim with the fish, Mary Ann’s story flows compassionately with all that came and went throughout the decades. The beautiful prose of American Buddha, illustrating a global spiritual journey in search of Truth (i.e. Dharma), is an inspiring bridge between east and west. —Tulku Thondup, noted scholar of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, author of The Heart of Unconditional Love

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Amazon

  • My memoir was over 200 pages when I asked for Kristin’s critique. I was pleased with what I had written, but felt challenged by how to weave the story, time and events together. Kristin has an incredible sense of narrative structure and was able to help me identify and develop a story arc that brought my experiences to life in a meaningful and compelling way. She helped me finesse unclear passages and directed me to areas that needed additional research. I was amazed at how quickly Kristin was able to grasp and articulate both Eastern and Western spiritual concepts (the book was a spiritual autobiography). She is deeply magnetized by the mystical side of life, which perhaps is one reason our professional relationship became a close personal friendship. Kristin is a gifted editor and book coach. I cannot recommend her highly enough! ~ Mary Ann, American Buddha: How a Christian Minister Discovered her Spiritual Destiny.

The Possibility of Today with Sibyl Chavis

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possibilityoftoday.com

We each have something unique to offer the world. Sibyl had an impulse to write a book and share something she knew deep inside, but was having a hard time articulating it. Sibyl writes, “My idea was getting lost in the jumble of 10,000 thoughts in my busy day-to-day. The process of writing with Kristin helped me to organize my ideas, which accelerated my inner transformation and deepened my understanding of my true offering. Our work together gave solid form to my insights, which I now share widely via The Possibility of Today, in my work, and with clients that I coach. Work with Kristin! She will help you to finish your book. But maybe even more important—she will help you to find your purpose, understand why you're here and empower you to live your truth.”

~ Sibyl Chavis, CEO, Sounds True Publishing.

Authenticity is Now: A Working Definition of the Fluid State of Being as it Applies to Business and Design by Ziba Design

Ziba Design reveals the nature of authenticity in business in its new book Authenticity is Now: A working definition of the fluid state of being as it applies to business and design. Essays and a poignant pictorial narrative unearth the issues every company must consider when evaluating their commitment to being authentic: Why authenticity, why now?; What are four components of authenticity? Is authenticity in the eye of the beholder? Does authenticity get lost in translation? Authenticity is Now is an essential handbook for any company intending to be relevant in the global marketplace today.

 “I love every prescription in it, and encourage every reader to apply them. Even better: the book exemplifies these principles itself.” ~ B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want