Bowen Cohen

Emily Bowen Cohen creates comics that explore intersectional identity. She is Jewish and a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She uses personal experience to tell stories that examine contemporary American and Jewish culture. Emily grew up in rural Oklahoma. Her father was the Chief of Staff at their tribal hospital and her mother is […]
Graves

Byron Graves is Ojibwe and Lakota. He was born and raised on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, where he played high school basketball. When he isn’t writing, he can be found playing retro video games, skateboarding, or cleaning up after his cats. Rez Ball, his debut novel won the William C Morris Young Adult debut […]
Tison

Ari Tison (Bribri) is the award-winning poet and the author of YA hybrid poetry & prose novel Saints of the Household (2023) and the forthcoming YA novel Together We See (2025) with FSG/Macmillan. Saints of the Household was the winner of the 2024 Walter Dean Myers Award, the winner of the 2024 Pura Belpré Award, […]
Kuyatt

Meg Eden Kuyatt is an autistic novelist and poet based in the DC area. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel Post-High School Reality Quest (2017), the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World and children’s novels including a 2024 ALA Schneider Family Book Award Honor […]
Johnson

Kim Johnson has a rich history of leadership, beginning with her early roles in social justice organizations during her teen years and throughout college. Her passion for creating positive change led her to a distinguished twenty-year career in higher education, where she served in various administrative roles, ultimately becoming a vice provost where she advanced […]
Dao

Julie C. Dao is the critically acclaimed author of many books. Her novels have earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, and won recognition from the Junior Library Guild, YALSA, and the American Library Association. A proud Vietnamese-American who was born in upstate New York, she now lives in New England. […]
Meade

Lily Meade writes real world issues through an extraordinary lens. She comes from a background of extreme poverty, something she prides herself on being transparent and vulnerably honest about. She has been homeless twice and still lives in housing insecurity. She believe stories have power and strives to live by the motto of a life […]
Hoang

Jamie Jo Hoang is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. She grew up in Orange County, CA—not the rich part—and worked as a docuseries producer before shifting to writing full-time. Her debut young adult novel, MY FATHER, THE PANDA KILLER, was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the Amazon Editor’s and […]
Iloh

Candice Iloh (they/them) is the award-winning author of young adult novels, Every Body Looking, Break This House, and Salt the Water. A 2020 National Book Award Finalist and 2021 Printz Honoree, Iloh is a first-generation Nigerian-American writer whose books center home. In 2018, they were awarded a Critical Breaks residency with Hi-ARTS to develop and […]
Neri

G. Neri is the Michael L. Printz and Coretta Scott King award-winning author of such books as the bestselling Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty and Ghetto Cowboy, which was made into the movie, Concrete Cowboy, starring Idris Elba. His books have been translated into multiple languages in over 25 countries. They include […]