Featured
Authors
Vera Brosgol - Friday Dessert Author Lecture, Saturday Breakfast Panel, Saturday Session
Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. She received a diploma in Classical Animation from Sheridan College, and spent many years drawing storyboards for feature animation but now she is writing and drawing books full-time. She likes that very much.
She has done illustration work for clients such as Nickelodeon, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Simon & Schuster. Her first graphic novel, Anya's Ghost, was published in 2011 by First Second Books and won an Eisner Award. Her first picture book, Leave Me Alone, published by Roaring Brook Press, was a 2017 Caldecott Honor book.
She loves knitting, baking, and trying not to kill her plants.
Cathy Camper - Saturday Breakfast Panel & Saturday Session
Cathy Camper is a writer, artist and librarian. Her library work involves serving K-12 students in seven school districts. She visits classrooms where she shares how to use the library, promotes reading and information literacy, and instructs students in research, intellectual freedom and privacy, and Internet safety.
Seeing and understanding the needs of students and educators is what led Camper to write and publish her first book in 2002, a nonfiction science book: Bugs Before Time: Prehistoric Insects and Their Relatives (Simon and Schuster). Seeing the needs of young people is also what prompted Camper to write her first graphic novel, Lowriders in Space (Chronicle Books, 2014). The sequel, Lowriders to the Center of the Earth, was the 2017 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner.
Dial/Penguin will be publishing her picture book Ten Ways to Hear Snow, about an Arab-American girl and her grandma.
Cathy has written articles and stories for children and adults in Cricket, Wired, and Giant Robot magazines. She was a participant in the VONA writers workshop in Berkeley, CA for writers of color, and was a board member on the Arab American Literary Journal Mizna. She currently reviews for Lambda Literary online. Cathy co-edits a tiny magazine about candy called Sugar Needle, and likes to make art out of seeds.
Bug Cathy at her website. Tweet to her @cfastwolf.
Fonda Lee - Saturday Breakfast Panel & Saturday Session
Fonda Lee writes science fiction and fantasy for teens and adults. Her debut novel, Zeroboxer, was an Andre Norton Award finalist, Jr. Library Guild Selection, ALA Top 10 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, Oregon Book Award finalist, and Oregon Spirit Book Award winner. Her second novel, Exo, released from Scholastic in February 2017.
Fonda wrote her first novel, about a dragon on a quest for a magic pendant, in fifth grade during the long bus ride to and from school each day. Many years later, she cast her high school classmates as characters in her second novel, a pulpy superhero saga co-written with a friend by passing a graphing calculator back and forth during biology class. Fortunately, both of these experiments are lost to the world forever.
Fonda is a former corporate strategist who has worked for or advised a number of Fortune 500 companies. She holds black belts in karate and kung fu, goes mad for smart action movies (think The Matrix, Inception, and Minority Report) and is an Eggs Benedict enthusiast. Born and raised in Calgary, Canada, she currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Learn more about Fonda at her website. Read her tweets @FondaJLee.
Jason Reynolds - Saturday Evening Lecture, Saturday Breakfast Panel, Saturday Session
Jason Reynolds is crazy. About stories. He is the author of critically acclaimed When I Was the Greatest, for which he was the recipient of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent; the Coretta Scott King Honor books The Boy in the Black Suit and All American Boys (co-written with Brendan Kiely, also the winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award); As Brave As You, his stunning middle grade debut that was a Time Book of the Year and winner of the Kirkus Award; and Ghost, the first book in his middle grade Track series, which was also a National Book Award finalist.
Jason graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in English, then packed his bags and moved to Brooklyn because somebody told him they were giving away dream-come-true vouchers.
Here's what Jason says he knows: I know there are a lot — A LOT — of young people who hate reading. I know that many of these book haters are boys. I know that many of these book-hating boys, don't actually hate books, they hate boredom. If you are reading this, and you happen to be one of these boys...know that I feel you. I REALLY do. Because even though I'm a writer, I hate reading boring books too.
Here's what I plan to do: NOT WRITE BORING BOOKS.
You can find Jason's ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com and his tweets @JasonReynolds83.
Author sessions and signings
& the full session schedule
Note: schedule is still being updated, so check back frequently