Ortega
New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author, Claribel A. Ortega is a former reporter who writes middle-grade and young adult fantasy inspired by her Dominican heritage. When she’s not busy turning her obsession with eighties pop culture, magic, and video games into books, she’s co-hosting her podcast Bad Author Book Club. Claribel is a Marvel […]
Vulchi
In sophomore year of high school, Priya Vulchi (she/her) co-founded the non-profit, CHOOSE (chooseorg.org, @choose_org), with the goal of advocating for racial literacy curricula in U.S. K-12 schools. Alongside her friend Winona Guo, she co-wrote a 224-page racial-literacy textbook, which was funded by Princeton University and featured in Teen Vogue. She then took a gap […]
Guo
In sophomore year of high school, Winona Guo (they/them) co-founded the non-profit, CHOOSE (chooseorg.org, @choose_org), with the goal of advocating for racial literacy curricula in U.S. K-12 schools. Alongside their friend Priya Vulchi, they co-wrote a 224-page racial-literacy textbook, which was funded by Princeton University and featured in Teen Vogue. They then took a gap […]
Guo & Vulchi
In 2014, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo entered sophomore year of high school, only a few months after the murder of Eric Garner and protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In their home state of New Jersey, financial literacy was a requirement, but racial literacy—the ability to think about and act on race and racial injustice—had been […]
Askaripour
New York Times bestselling author Mateo Askaripour wants people to feel seen. Mateo’s work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. His first novel, Black Buck, takes on racism in corporate America with humor and wit. Askaripour was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars […]
Wong
Jack Wong (黃雋喬) is the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award-winning author/illustrator of WHEN YOU CAN SWIM (Scholastic) as well as the picture books THE WORDS WE SHARE (Annick Press, Fall 2023), and ALL THAT GROWS (Groundwood Books, Spring 2024) and The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma & His Gifts to the World (Spring 2025). Jack was […]
Agostini
Buffalo, NY native Alliah L. Agostini is an award-winning marketer who has marketed everything from iconic brands to scrappy start-ups, but motherhood helped her return to her first love: children’s literature. She writes and speaks to spread joy, truth, and to help more children see themselves reflected on the page. Alliah is a widely sought-after […]
Bousamra
Rose Bousamra is an experienced comics professional, specializing in illustration and graphic novels for kids and young adults. Their first graphic novel, Frizzy, written by Claribel A. Ortega and published with First Second Books, earned a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the Pura Belpre award for Children’s Text, an Eisner Award nomination (Best Publication […]
Johnson
Kevin Johnson (aka “Captain Create”) is a proud Temple University alumnus, who grew up just south of Philadelphia, PA. There, he spent his childhood seeking adventure with friends, watching movies, reading comics, and falling in love with the magic of storytelling. Kevin is the author of the critically-acclaimed picture book CAPE along with an upcoming […]
Park
Patricia Park is a tenured professor of undergraduate and graduate MFA creative writing at American University, a former Fulbright scholar in Creative Arts, Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, and American Association of University Women fellow, and author of the debut young adult novel, Imposter Syndrome & Other Confessions Of Alejandra Kim, (Random House […]