Media, Bios & Press Inquiries

📄 Click here to download Kristi’s Full Media Kit (.docx)

Welcome! Whether you're a journalist, podcast host, event planner, or curious soul exploring my work—I’m so glad you’re here.
Below you’ll find my official bios in three lengths (long, medium, and short), along with key information for interviews, speaking engagements, and feature requests.

I’m available to speak on topics like:

• Children’s literacy and storytelling innovation
  
  

• Yoga, mindfulness, and somatic education
  
  

• Nonprofit leadership and movement-building
  
  

• Conscious drinking and modern wellness
  
  

• Neurodivergence and creative entrepreneurship
  
  

• The power of representation in books
  
  

If you’re looking to create waves of impact, I’d love to be part of the ripple.

📩 Media inquiries: kristi@living-libraries.com

Kristi Cruise – Long Media Bio

Kristi Cruise – Long Media Bio (2025)

Kristi Cruise is an award-winning literacy advocate, nonprofit leader, and children’s author who has been helping kids fall in love with reading—and themselves—since 2009. A former TV news anchor and health reporter turned visionary educator, Kristi is best known for blending storytelling, Somatic Literacy™ practives, and social impact to spark real-world change.

She is the creator of LiYo Literacy Yoga Fusion®, a revolutionary approach that trains educators to fuse movement, breath, and reading into a single, embodied practice that improves posture, comprehension, focus—and joy. Her book The LiLi Key helps children awaken their inner “Living Books” through kinesthetic reading rituals that transform how stories are experienced and remembered.

Kristi is also the Founder and CEO of Living Libraries®, a global literacy movement helping kids become the next generation of “readers and leaders, dreamers and doers, and most unstoppable mountain movers.” Through school visits, story programs, and immersive read-aloud experiences, Living Libraries® equips children with the tools and mindset to grow into who they were meant to become. Kristi has authored 11 diverse and bilingual books used in Living Libraries® internal programming, including her flagship middle grade series that uses humor, dual realities, and a flip-style graphic format (called a ChapGraph™) to rewire how kids read.

In 2021, Kristi co-founded Books with Color, Inc., a nonprofit Authors Alliance that helps diverse indie authors bring their books—and themselves—into classrooms where children can see themselves in both the stories and the storytellers. With early support from United Way of Greater Charlotte and the Duke Energy Foundation, the initiative is expanding into a national tech-supported platform that connects authors and schools through free live readings.

Kristi’s latest innovations reflect a deepening of her work into adult wellness and neuroplasticity. In 2024 and 2025, she launched several bold new ventures, including:

• One and Done™ – A conscious drinking method and community for women who want to feel satisfied after one drink (or none), using sensory rituals, neuroscience, and somatic literacy.

• Edging™ – A wellness philosophy that invites people to pause just before overconsumption and reclaim the power of “just enough.”

• Somatic Literacy™ – A growing framework that teaches people to “read” their nervous system and emotional patterns through embodied practice.

• Backwards Book Club™ – A literacy method and digital series where children read books in reverse (from end to beginning, bottom to top, right to left) to activate cognitive flexibility and create new neural pathways.

• Radical Reading Revolution™ (R³) – A genre-breaking reading movement designed to make reading weird again—and wonderfully engaging.

Before launching her current ventures, Kristi founded and led a Charlotte-based book upcycling nonprofit that began in her garage and became the largest and most efficient book bank in the Southeast, distributing over 20,000+ books each month to underserved children. Over her decade-long leadership, the organization reached more than 60,000 kids annually and laid the groundwork for Kristi’s next chapter: helping children not just receive books—but fall in love with them.

Kristi lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she’s raising three strong Living Libraries, teaching yoga at Life Time Athletic in Waverly, (sadly) only drinking decaf, but happily enjoying her one glass of wine. Her mission is simple but powerful:

To help children—and the grownups who love them—realize that books don’t just change lives.
They unlock the full power of them.