Angela Shanté is a former K-12 classroom teacher, and award-winning author of THE NOISY CLASSROOM, a picture book that she wrote about her third-grade classroom to help soothe childhood anxiety assoc…
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson loves bringing books and children together and feels lucky to have two careers that foster this. The children's librarian and author says, "It was destined from the day I was bo…
Margarita Engle is a Cuban-American poet, novelist, and journalist whose work has been published in many countries. She lives with her husband in northern California.
ELIZABETH RUSCH is an award-winning book author, magazine writer, editor, writing teacher and speaker. Her wide-ranging passions include astronomy, volcanology, art, music, history, nature, waves, jok…
Cynthia Leitich Smith is a bestselling, acclaimed author of books for all ages, including Here Come the Aunties!, Firefly Season, Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, On a Wing and a Tear, Sisters of the Neve…
Paula Yoo is an acclaimed book author, TV writer/producer, and musician. Her children’s and Young Adult nonfiction books and novels have won many awards, including the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, th…
Maria was born and raised in the Netherlands, and studied Visual Communications at George Washington University in DC. Maria's historical graphic novel Song of a Blackbird, about a female artist in th…
Jason Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audience. After earning a BA in English from The University of Maryland, College Park, Jason Reynolds moved t…
Renée Watson is the author of the children’s picture book, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen (Random House, June 2010), which was featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Her middle grade novel…
Rebecca E. Hirsch is a botanist-turned-writer and the author of more than 80 science and nature books for children. Her books have won a Riverby Award, a Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, a Gree…
Ibi Zoboi's debut novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist. She is also the New York Times Bestselling author of Pride, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Punching the Air with co-a…
Candy J. Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. She has been a staff writer for four newspapers, including the The Detroit Free Press and …
JASMINNE MÉNDEZ is a Macondo and Canto Mundo Fellow, as well as a Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) alumna. She is the author of a multi-genre memoir, Island of Dreams (2013), winner of an Internation…
Samuel Teer was born to a deaf maintenance worker and an immigrant that spoke English as a distant second language. Obviously he became a writer. He was raised outside of St. Louis, MO. He currently l…
Randy Ribay is an award-winning author of young adult fiction. His most recent novel, Patron Saints of Nothing, earned five starred reviews, was selected as a Freeman Book Award winner, and was a fina…
Hannah V. Sawyerr was recognized as the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore in 2016. Her debut novel in verse All the Fighting Parts was a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, a Walter Dean My…
George Matthew Johnson, more commonly known as George M. Johnson, is a queer Black American author, journalist, and activist. They are best known as the author of the memoir-manifesto All Boys Aren't …
Shifa Saltagi Safadi was born in Syria and immigrated to the US with her parents when she was a young girl. She is a bilingual Arabic/English speaker, and is very familiar with the challenges of learn…
Josh Galarza writes fiction and creative nonfiction and is a multidisciplinary visual artist specializing in printmaking, book arts, and sculpture. His debut novel, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the …
DeAndra, an autistic and neurodivergent Jamaican-American author, has been reading since she could remember and writing since anyone put a pen in her hand. When she isn't delving into fantasy worlds o…
Myah Hollis is a Pennsylvanian writer living in Los Angeles. She specializes in Sad Girl Lit, mainly due to her chronic fascination with psychology. Not About a Boy is her debut novel.
Violet Duncan is Plains Cree and Taino from Kehewin Cree Nation. She has toured nationally and internationally as an author, educator, dancer and storyteller.
