Kai Harris

Author of
What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022)

Kai Harris is a doctoral student in the English department at Western Michigan University, where she specializes in Creative Writing, and joined Santa Clara University as an assistant professor. Kai is an advocate for the Black community, and she writes fiction filled with family, love, and #blackgirlmagic. Her works has appeared in Longform, Rabble Lit, Kweli Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, and the Hilltop Review. She has also published essays on allyship and work-life balance as a contributing writer at The Everygirl.

Kai was selected as a fellow in the Mellon Foundation Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop in 2019, where she explored possibilities related to the Humanities. Kai is also a proud VONA/Voices Alum. During her PhD, Kai was the editor-in-chief of Third Coast Magazine, and she was recognized in 2018 for academic excellence among underrepresented students through the John Orr Prize at Western Michigan University.

Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / kaiharriswrites.com / Represented by Ayesha Pande

Books by Kai

What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022)

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
A Marie Claire Book Club pick

After her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit, almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB) and her teenage sister Nia are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing. What The Fireflies Knew spans a single, sweltering summer as KB attempts to get her bearings in a world that has turned upside down–a father who is labeled a fiend; a mother whose smile no longer reaches her eyes; a sister, once her best friend, who has crossed the threshold of adolescence and suddenly wants nothing to do with her; a grandfather who is grumpy and silent; the white kids across the street who are friendly, but only sometimes. And all of them are keeping secrets. Pin-balling between resentment, abandonment and loneliness, KB is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice. As she examines the jagged pieces of her recently shattered world, she learns that while some truths cut deep, a new life–and a new KB–can be built from the shards.

Praise

“Harris rewrites the coming-of-age story with Black girlhood at the center.”
—New York Times Book Review

"What the Fireflies Knew is a fabulous debut and truly a gem of a novel, full of the beauty, tenderness, and poignancy of Black girlhood.”
—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

"A story of Black girlhood from a promising new voice in fiction."
—Kirkus Reviews

“Kai Harris’s debut novel is a stirring story of a transformative summer for a Black girl growing up in 1990s Michigan. . . . This elegant and eloquent novel is perfect for readers who loved Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.”
—BookPage (starred)