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Check your email (including your spam filters) for the conference invite. You can also download the app using the links to the left. Please use the email you registered with for the conference when logging in!
Check out the additional workshops, activities & other amazing things Ithaca has to offer here!
We are proud to announce the following keynote speakers:
Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid, Class Act, and School Trip. New Kid is the only book in history to win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature (2020); the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature (2019), and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer (2020). Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City and now travels the world telling kids and their families about the importance of reading.
**Candace will be hosting a pre-conference session on Thursday, April 30th, from 1-4. Please see the registration page for more details and pricing.
Candace Fleming awarded herself the Newbery Medal in fifth grade after scraping the gold sticker off the class copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond and pasting it onto her first novel — a ten-page, ten-chapter mystery called Who Done It? She’s been collecting awards (her own, not Elizabeth George Speare’s) ever since.
Today, Candace Fleming is the author of more than fifty books for children and young adults, including the 2021 Sibert Medal-winning Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, as well as the 2021 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award-winning The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh. A recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, she is also the two-time winner of both the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, and the Sibert Honor. Her most recent titles are The Enigma Girls and Narwhal, Unicorn of the Arctic.
Kelly Yang is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the FRONT DESK series ("One of the 30 Most Influential Children's Books Of All Time" -BookRiot), including FRONT DESK, THREE KEYS, and ROOM TO DREAM, KEY PLAYER, and TOP STORY, FINALLY HEARD, FINALLY SEEN, NEW FROM HERE, YES WE WILL, and young adult novels PARACHUTES and PRIVATE LABEL. FRONT DESK is Kelly's award-winning middle grade debut novel about a 10 year old Chinese American immigrant girl who manages the front desk of a motel while her parents clean the rooms. FRONT DESK was awarded the 2019 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, the Parents' Choice Gold Medal, was the 2019 Global Read Aloud, and was named an Amazon Best Book of the Year, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a NPR Best Book of the Year, and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year.
Kelly immigrated to America when she was 6 years old and grew up in Southern California, where she and her parents worked in three different motels. She overcame poverty to go to college at the age of 13 and law school at the age of 17. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in Political Science, and Harvard Law School. After law school, she gave up law to pursue her passion of writing and teaching children writing. She is the founder of The Kelly Yang Project (kellyyang.edu.hk), a leading writing and debating program for kids in Asia. As a writing teacher for 13 years, Kelly helped thousands of children find their voice and become better writers and more powerful speakers. Before turning to fiction, she was also a columnist for the South China Morning Post for many years. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She is the Honorary Chair of the American Library Association for National Library Week. She lives with her husband, three children and two dogs in Los Angeles.
Neal Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award, Courage to Dream, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, Scythe, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, the Unwind Dystology, which won more than thirty domestic and international awards, and the highly acclaimed novels, Dry, and Roxy which he co-wrote with his son, Jarrod For his body of work, Neal won the 2024 Margaret A. Edwards Award, and the ALAN Lifetime Achievement Award. His novel, Unwind, has become part of the literary canon in many school districts across the country-and has won more than thirty domestic and international awards. Many of his novels are in development as TV series and movies.
Knickerbocker Award Winner:
Vashti Harrison
Vashti Harrison is the New York Times bestselling creator of Big, which was awarded the 2024 Caldecott Medal, a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Book Award Illustrator Honor, in addition to being a National Book Award finalist. Vashti is also the #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Little Leaders, Little Dreamers, and Little Legends, and the illustrator of Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe (for which she received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Illustrator Honor), Matthew A. Cherry’s Hair Love, Andrea Beaty's I Love You Like Yellow, and Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Hello, Star, among others. A two-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children, Vashti lives in Brooklyn, New York.
