THE KIMBILIO READING SERIES PRESENTS: A Reading and Conversation with Toni Ann Johnson and Avery Irons

THE KIMBILIO READING SERIES PRESENTS: A Reading and Conversation with Toni Ann Johnson and Avery Irons was held on April 9th 2026 via Zoom and celebrated new work by Kimbilio Fellows Toni Ann Johnson and Avery Irons.

Avery Irons is the author of the novella Glass Men, which won Big Fiction Magazine's Novella Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, the African American Review, and Ragazine.CC. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds a Juris Doctor from the Columbia University School of Law. Avery was born and (mostly) raised in central Illinois. She currently lives in upstate New York where she writes historical fiction and speculative fiction (and sometimes a mix of the two), while drinking lots of mugs of tea.

Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for her short story collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste, which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. The book was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a finalist for the Saroyan Prize. A novella, Homegoing, is linked to the story collection and was released in 2021 after winning Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest. Her forthcoming collection, But Where’s Home?, is linked to the previous two books and was selected as the winner of the Screen Door Press Fiction Prize by Crystal Wilkinson, who also edited. Johnson has been a fellow with Callaloo, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Kimbilio. She’s based in Los Angeles.