Join the email list for all new book updates, events, and all things new with Kathya Alexander!

Follow twelve-year-old Mandy as she comes of age during the Civil Rights Movement, navigating family, faith, grief, and hope in 1960s Arkansas. Told in powerful verse by award-winning author Kathya Alexander. Keep A'Livin' is now available via audiobook, physical, and digital. Get your copy today!
"Not since THE COLOR PURPLE has a book come along that will open the minds and hearts of all who read it. If you were alive in the last century, and even if you didn't arrive until this century, this story will fill a major gap in your understanding of American history. They sure as hell didn't teach it to us in school, but some of us lived it. Kathya Alexander's writing is brilliant, evocative, and this is a book students of literature will be studying for a long, long time. Think Zora Neale Hurston. Think Toni Morrison. Think bell hooks. "
Paula Coomer, Author of Somebody Should Have Scolded The Girl

DO WHAT YOU WANNA DO
Wanna be a superhero? An astronaut? A grumpy old man? A rapper? You wanna sing? Dance? We'll do it together and put it all on stage. AND YOU'LL GET PAID $250!!! Bring your younger sibling. I'll take them too. SPREAD THE WORD! HUNE 20 - AUGUST 15, 2026.

Grappling with grief, ancestral trauma, and a family, community, and society in flux, Mandy dares to dream of a future outside the limitations of racism and patriarchy.
Copyright © 2026 KATHYA ALEXANDER - All Rights Reserved.