Mikki Kendall

Mikki Kendall is the author of Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, published by Viking in 2020, a New York Times bestseller that has been translated into multiple languages; Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights, illustrated by A. D'Amico and published by Ten Speed Press in 2019; and the editor of the anthology Black Girl Magic. She is a cultural critic whose commentary appears across Time, the Washington Post, Essence, the Guardian, and adjacent venues.

Her training is in writing and in the long discipline of independent cultural-criticism work. She came up through online cultural-commentary platforms in the mid-2000s and has built a substantial body of work across the past two decades. She is based in Chicago.

Her mentor focus is the sustainable cultural-critic practice. The realities of trade publishing for writers without academic positions. The specific work of pitching to and maintaining relationships with editors at major-platform publications. The financial structure of a freelance cultural-critic income — the columns, the freelance pieces, the book advances, the speaking fees, the adjacent work that fills out the income. The platform decisions in the current social-media-and-substack landscape.

Her secondary mentor focus is the refusal of pundit-ification of serious work. The decisions about which topics to engage and which to decline. The discipline of taking the time to do the research before publishing. The relationship between the writer's actual expertise and the editor's commissioning pattern. The slow work of building a body of work that holds up across many topics rather than being captured by the one topic the writer is asked to comment on most often.

Mentees who book with Mikki come from three primary populations. First: freelance writers in the first three to seven years of professional writing trying to build sustainable practices. Second: established writers considering the trade-book pathway who do not hold academic positions. Third: cultural critics navigating the relationship between social-media platform engagement and longer-form work.

Her style is plain. She is candid about the financial-and-time math of the work. She is candid about what editors can and cannot do. She is candid about the structural barriers in the writing industry for women of color cultural critics specifically. She is also generous on the practical-operational knowledge of the work.

Outside the writing she serves on board and advisory structures for adjacent cultural and educational organizations and contributes to the long-form interview and lecture-circuit work that surrounds her book publication and column work.

She is a member of the Creative Arts and Media Circle network here as a senior member of the writing-craft subgroup, and contributes to discussion threads on the specific topics of freelance income structure and trade-book publishing for writers without academic affiliations. She is also active on the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network on the topics of rest, refusal, and the unsustainable expectations placed on Black women cultural critics.

Sessions are 45 minutes. The pre-session brief is a writing sample (no more than three thousand words), a list of current pitches and publications, and a one-page document on the specific question. She reads the writing before the session. The session structure is practical; she works the specific writing and the specific career decision. Mentees leave with detailed written notes on the writing and a specific action list. Follow-up sessions are common for writers working on active book-length projects.

Her work as a cultural critic spans nearly two decades of online and print writing. The Hood Feminism book consolidated themes she had been developing across her long-form writing into a single book-length argument. The book reached audiences well beyond her established blog and newsletter readership and has been translated into multiple languages.

On the structural conditions for freelance cultural critics in the current media landscape she is candid. The pay rates at most major publications have not kept up with the cost of living. The pitch-and-publish cycle is slow. The dependence on adjacent income streams — book advances, speaking fees, sponsored content — is structural for most working freelance writers in her tier. She is open about these specifics with mentees who are considering full-time freelance writing.

Her Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists graphic-history book represents her transition into the graphic-form publishing pathway. The collaboration with illustrator A. D'Amico is part of what she discusses with mentees considering graphic-form work. The writer-illustrator collaboration is its own craft.

Her Black Girl Magic anthology editorial work represents her engagement with the editor-side of the trade-publishing pathway. The selection of writers, the editing of essays, the production-and-promotion infrastructure — all of this is part of her broader practice. She is generous on the specific operational knowledge from this work.

Her engagement with online platforms across the past two decades has shifted as the platforms themselves have shifted. The discipline of moving with the platform landscape while maintaining a coherent body of writing is part of what she works with mentees on.

Her engagement in the platform's Creative Arts and Media Circle and the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network covers the practical operational questions of freelance cultural-critic work and the broader structural conditions for women-of-color writers in the contemporary publishing landscape. Her contributions to discussion threads are plain-spoken and operationally specific, in keeping with the broader candid register of her published work.

The creative-industries landscape continues to evolve in ways that affect Black women creators and creative-industries professionals specifically. The financing landscape for films, books, and adjacent creative-industries projects has shifted across the past decade. The platform landscape has shifted. The agent-and-publisher relationships have shifted. The mentor practice connects specifically to the senior-level craft questions and to the structural conditions that determine whether individual creative-industries careers progress at parity.

Sessions are 45 minutes. The pre-session brief is a writing sample (no more than three thousand words), a list of current pitches and publications, and a one-page document on the specific question. She reads the writing before the session. The session structure is practical; she works the specific writing and the specific career decision. Mentees leave with detailed written notes.

The platform's mentor infrastructure brings African and African-diaspora women senior mentors into structured engagement with the next generations of women in their fields. The structured booking permits sustained one-on-one relationships across the long arc of the mentee's career; the platform's broader network and event infrastructure permits broader community engagement alongside the individual mentor relationships. Both are part of the larger infrastructure that this platform is building for the women in this work. The mentor practice is one of the foundational layers.