Kirstin Cronn-Mills

About Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Kirstin Cronn-Mills was born in Virginia and raised in Cozad, Nebraska, before settling in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1992. She met her husband Daniel Cronn-Mills while attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and later earned a Master of Arts degree and a doctorate from Iowa State University. She currently teaches writing, literature, and critical thinking at South Central College, a two-year college in North Mankato.

Her family was always oriented around reading — her mother later reported that Kirstin learned to read at age three — and she began writing poetry in middle school. Adult life led her to fiction and nonfiction for young adults, drawn by what she describes as an obligation to write honestly for teenagers who are navigating difficult terrain without enough mirrors in the books available to them.

After the 2016 election, Cronn-Mills and her husband founded the Ally Network of Minnesota, later renamed the Solidarity Network of Minnesota, an organization that supports fair and equal treatment, alerts members to community members in need of support, and posts educational resources. In 2019, they received the Greater Mankato Pathfinder Award for founding the network.

Her Work

Cronn-Mills's first novel, The Sky Always Hears Me: And the Hills Don't Mind (2009), told the story of Morgan, a Nebraska teenager who kisses her female classmate despite having a boyfriend — an early entry in a body of work that consistently engages with LGBTQ+ identity without treating it as a problem to be solved. It was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2010.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children (2012) is her most celebrated novel: a story about Gabe, a transgender teenager who finds community and voice through a late-night radio show. The book won the ALA Stonewall Book Award in 2014, was an Independent Publisher Book Awards silver medalist for LGBT+ Fiction, reached the ALA Rainbow List Top Ten, and was named to ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults. It was also a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Her nonfiction titles include Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices (2014), which collects first-person narratives from transgender individuals, and LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality (2016), which documents the history of LGBTQ+ visibility in sports. Both received recognition from the American Library Association and were selected by the Junior Library Guild. Her 2016 illustrated novel Original Fake was a Minnesota Book Award finalist, and her most recent novel, Rules for Camouflage, was published by Little, Brown in 2024.

Book Challenges

Cronn-Mills's books have appeared on challenge lists in school districts across multiple states. The targets have consistently been the titles that engage most directly with LGBTQ+ identity: Beautiful Music for Ugly Children for its trans protagonist, Transgender Lives for its affirming portrayal of transgender experience, and LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field for its coverage of queer athletes. Cronn-Mills has spoken publicly about the impact of book bans on LGBTQ+ youth, arguing that the books being removed are often the only place some teenagers encounter themselves in print.