Featured Participants of the National Black Writers Biennial Symposium 2025
Honoring Middle Grade and Young Adult Storytelling
These esteemed writers will gather at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn
Wednesday, March 27 to Saturday, March 29, 2025
Honorees
Tony Medina
Tony Medina was born in the South Bronx, raised in the Throgs Neck Housing projects, and is a Veteran of the United States Army. Recently appointed Associate Chair and Director of Creative Writing in the Department of English at Howard University, he holds a master’s and PhD from Binghamton University, SUNY. A multi-genre author/editor of 25 award-winning books for adults and young people, Medina’s work appears in over 160 anthologies and journals, including “Seven Steps to Heaven Haiku” and “I’ve Got the Covid Blues,” featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. Medina’s books for young people include DeShawn Days, Christmas Makes Me Think, Love to Langston, Follow-up Letters to Santa from Kids who Never Got a Response, I and I, Bob Marley; The President Looks Like Me & Other Poems, I Am Alfonso Jones, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy. His recent honors include two Paterson Awards for Books for Young People; the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award Special Recognition; the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award honor; and his I and I, Bob Marley audiobook, narrated by actor Jaime Lincoln Smith and produced by Live Oak Media, received the 2022 Audie Award in the Young Listeners category.
Tony Medina
Rita Williams-Garcia
Rita Williams-Garcia entered kindergarten with a love of storytelling and writing. A Queens, New York native, Williams-Garcia is the author of over a dozen books for young adults and middle grade readers. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies.
Williams-Garcia is both a three-time Coretta Scott King Author Award recipient and three-time National Book Award Finalist. Her novel, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground won the 2018 NAACP Image Award for Literature for Young People and was a 2017 National Book Award Finalist. Williams-Garcia is most known for her multiple award-winning Gaither Sisters trilogy that begins with One Crazy Summer, recipient of the Newbery Honor, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction, among many others. Her YA Adult crossover historical novel, A Sitting in St. James, set in 1860 Louisiana, won the 2022 LA Times Book Prize for Young Adults, the 2021 Boston Globe - Horn Book Fiction Award, and was a 2022 Audie Book Finalist. A Sitting in St. James has also been listed among People Magazine’s 2021 top ten books for children and teens.
Respected among her peers and in the industry, Williams-Garcia was named the ALSC 2024 Children’s Literature Lecturer, and honored with the NYLA Empire State Award and the University of Southern Mississippi Literary Medallion.
Rita Williams-Garcia received her MA in Creative Writing from Queens College, CUNY, and her BA in Liberal Arts from Hofstra University. After working in the private sector for 25 years, she served on faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children and Young Adults program from 2005-2015. During her tenure, she has worked with authors Ibi Zoboi, Varian Johnson, and Frances Lee Hall, among other published authors.
Williams-Garcia is currently working on a book of speculative fiction for tween readers.
Rita Williams-Garcia
Key Speakers
Elizabeth Acevedo
Elizabeth Acevedo is The New York Times best selling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of numerous other titles including Family Lore; With the Fire on High, which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal; and Clap When You Land, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. In 2022, The Poetry Foundation selected Elizabeth Acevedo as the Young People’s Poet Laureate. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her husband.
Elizabeth Acevedo
Asari Beale
Asari Beale is an Afro-Latina writer, educator, and leader deeply committed to children’s literacy. She is the Executive Director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative, a member of the Board of Directors of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, and a steering committee member of LitNet, a network serving America’s literary community. She has taught literature and creative writing at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Fordham University. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, she served as the Director of Communications and Community Relations at LSA Family Health Service and as Communications Manager at Reach Out and Read of Greater New York. Ms. Beale holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives, loves, and writes out of Harlem, New York City.
Asari Beale
Lamar Giles
Lamar Giles is the author of the acclaimed novels Ruin Road, The Getaway, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, SPIN, Fake ID, and has written for globally beloved brands like DC Comics, Star Wars, and National Geographic. He is a three-time Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award nominee, a recipient of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's Youth Literary Award, and founding member of the non-profit We Need Diverse Books. He resides in Virginia with his family.
Lamar Giles
Patrick Oliver
Patrick M. Oliver is a youth and community literacy advocate dedicated to promoting reading and writing as tools of empowerment. Through a variety of innovative projects, Oliver engages children, youth, and adults in activities such as writing workshops, virtual series, author talks, book discussions, professional development sessions, and community forums. After working for 11 years in the defense industry as a government material and contract administrator, Oliver spent the past 27 years primarily working in the literary arts. Former owner of a boutique bookstore with African-themed accessories (Little Rock, AR), director of an after-school program (Little Rock), director of sales and marketing Third World Press (Chicago), program director of a city-wide reading program (Chicago), publisher of four books, and recipient numerous grants and contracts to curate, manage, and facilitate literary arts workshops around the United States. He serves on the advisory board of the James Madison University, Furious Flower Center. Founder and CEO, Say It Loud! Readers and Writers. www.speakloudly.com
Patrick Oliver
Jennifer Nicole Baker
Jennifer is a publishing professional with over 20 years’ experience in a range of roles (editorial, production, media) and is an instructor for Bay Path University’s Creative Nonfiction MFA, as well as the creator/host of the podcast Minorities in Publishing. Jennifer was named the 2019 Publishers Weekly Star Watch “SuperStar” because her “varied work championing diversity in publishing has made her an indispensable fixture in the book business.” Her essay What We Aren’t was also listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2018. Her short story The Pursuit of Happiness was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2017 by Newtown Literary Journal and is featured in the anthology What God Is Honored Here? Jennifer is the editor of Everyday People: The Color of Life—A Short Story Anthology with Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster). Her YA novel Forgive Me Not was published in August 2023 with Nancy Paulsen Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House).
Jennifer Nicole Baker
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of over thirty non-fiction and historical fiction titles for picture book, chapter book, middle grade and young adult readers and her work has been named to ALA Notable Books and Bank Street Best Children’s Book lists.
Her verse picture book biography of Harriet Tubman, Before She Was Harriet was nominated for an NAACP image award and received a Jane Addams Honor, Christopher Award and Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Finding Langston, the first in the middle grade Finding Langston trilogy, was the winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. One Big Open Sky, featuring the lives of three female narrators journeying along the Oregon Trail in 1879 is her debut novel in verse.
A MacDowell fellow, Lesa serves on the SCBWI Advisory Council and is a host of KidLitTV's Past Present: Giving Past Stories New Life.
Lesa is the mother of four and frequently collaborates with her husband, illustrator James Ransome. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York where each day she takes long walks and short naps. In between she writes.
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Cheryl Willis Hudson
Cheryl Willis Hudson is an author, editor, and co-founder with Wade Hudson of Just Us Books, Inc, an independent publisher of Black-interest books for young people that recently celebrated its 35th anniversary. Her titles include the picture books AFRO-BETS ABC Book, Bright Eyes, Brown Skin, Hands Can, Recognize! An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life (co-edited with her husband Wade) and Brave Black Firsts: 50 Black Women Who Changed America.
Cheryl Willis Hudson
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the NAACP Image award-nominated author of several books for children, including Operation Sisterhood, a BCALA Best of the Best and IndieNext Top Ten Pick; Maked a Makes a Birthday Treat, a Bank Street, and Chicago Public Library Best of the Year book; Kirkus Best of the Year It Doesn’t Take a Genius; Someday Is Now, a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People; CCBC Choices title Saving Earth; and 8th Grade Superzero, a Notable Book for a Global Society and Amazon Editors' Pick. She's the co-author of NAACP Image award nominee Two Naomis, and The Sun Does Shine (Young Readers Edition), a School Library Journal and Chicago Public Library Best of the Year.
Olugbemisola has contributed to collections including We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, On the Block, and The Hero Next Door. She’s written for publications like PBS Parents, Read Brightly, American Baby, and the legendary Right On! Magazine. Olugbemisola has extensive experience in education, and lives in NYC where she writes, makes things, and needs to get more sleep. Visit her online at olugbemisolabooks.com.
Olugbemisola
Rhuday-Perkovich
Tracey Baptiste
Tracey Baptiste is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-six books for children including the popular JUMBIES series including THE JUMBIES, RISE OF THE JUMBIES, and THE JUMBIE GOD’S REVENGE as well as the picture book LOOKING FOR A JUMBIE. She writes picture books, middle grade, and young adult, fiction and nonfiction, and has contributed to several anthologies. Her upcoming 2024 novels are MOKO MAGIC: CARNIVAL CHAOS and BOY 2.0. Her nonfiction work AFRICAN ICONS: TEN PEOPLE WHO SHAPED HISTORY is now available in paperback. Find Tracey online at www.traceybaptiste.com and connect on Instagram @traceybaptistewrites.
Tracey Baptiste
Jay Coles
Jay Coles (b. 1995) is a graduate of Vincennes University, Ball State University, and Grand Canyon University. He holds degrees in Liberal Arts, Education, and English/Literature. When he's not writing diverse books, he's advocating for them, teaching middle school students and composing for various music publishers. His debut novel, TYLER JOHNSON WAS HERE, is based on true events in his life and inspired by police brutality in America. Jay is also the author of THINGS WE COULDN'T SAY and the forthcoming YOUR FINAL MOMENTS as well as a key contributor in several anthologies for young people. He resides in Muncie, Indiana with his wife and 2 cats named Sage and Saffron.
Jay Coles
Wade Hudson
Wade Hudson is president of Just Us Books, a children and young adult book publishing company he and his wife Cheryl founded in 1988. He is also the author of many books for young readers. His most recently titles the coming-of-age-memoir, Defiant, Growing Up in the Jim Crow South, the picture book Invincible, Fathers and Mothers of Black America and The Reckoning, a middle grade novel. Defiant is the 2022 winner of the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature.
Wade Hudson
Liara Tamani
Liara Tamani lives in Houston, Texas. She is the author of the acclaimed young adult novels Calling My Name, All the Things We Never Knew, and What She Missed. Her words have appeared in Time Magazine, NPR, and The New York Times. And her work has been featured by Good Morning America, Buzzfeed, Essence Magazine, Teen Vogue, and more. Before becoming a writer, she attended Harvard Law School and worked as a marketing coordinator for the Houston Rockets & Comets, production assistant for Girlfriends (TV show), home accessories designer, floral designer, and yoga and dance teacher. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Duke University.
Liara Tamani
Derrick Barnes
Derrick Barnes is a National Book Award Finalist for his 2022 graphic novel Victory Stand-Raising My Fist For Justice, which also won the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award, and a Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. He is also the author of multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers.
He became the only author to win the Kirkus Prize twice for his 2020 release, the NY Times Bestseller, I Am Every Good Thing, and is also the creator of the NY Times Bestselling companion picture books, The King of Kindergarten (2019) and The Queen of Kindergarten (2022).
He is a graduate of Jackson State University, and was the first African-American male creative copywriter hired by Hallmark Cards. Derrick is a native of Kansas City, MO, but currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with wife, and their four sons, the Mighty Barnes Brothers.
Derrick Barnes
Tiffeni Fontno
Tiffeni Fontno, Director of Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University, holds a doctorate from the University of Dayton's Leadership for Organizations program. She's an active member of the American Library Association. With a background in education, including classroom teaching and serving as a school librarian and technology teacher. Her expertise lies in education and curriculum librarianship. She is passionate about literacy, children's literature, and curriculum development.
Tiffeni Fontno
Tiffany D. Jackson
Tiffany D. Jackson is the NYT Bestselling, award-winning author of YA novels Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, White Smoke, Santa in The City, The Weight of Blood, and co-author of Blackout. A Coretta Scott King — John Steptoe New Talent Award-winner and the NAACP Image Award-nominee, she received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is currently splitting her time between the borough she loves and the south, most likely multitasking.
Tiffany D. Jackson
Alicia Williams
Alicia D. Williams is the award-winning author of Genesis Begins Again, which received the Newbery and Kirkus Prize honors, a William C. Morris finalist, and won the Coretta Scott King--John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Alicia D also debuted a picture book biography, Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston and followed up with Jane Addams Peace Award winning Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress. Her latest picture book, The Talk, won both Coretta Scott King and Golden Kite Honors. Alicia celebrates her verse novel, Mid-Air, a 2024 National Book Award longlist title.
Alicia shares a passion for writing which stems from conducting artist residencies in schools as a Master Teaching Artist of arts-integration. Alicia D infuses her love for drama, movement, comedy, and storytelling to inspire students to write their own narratives.
Alicia Williams
Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were New York Times bestsellers. She also authored the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Her most recent novel, Remember Us, is set in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–2019. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Woodson is also the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim.
The MacArthur Foundation describes Jacqueline Woodson’s work as follows: “In nearly thirty publications that span picture books, young adult novels, and poetry, Woodson crafts stories about Black children, teenagers, and families that evoke the hopefulness and power of human connection even as they tackle difficult issues such as the history of slavery and segregation ...”
Woodson is a previous Center for Black Literature National Black Writers Conference honoree.
Jacqueline Woodson
Nazera Sadiq Wright
Dr. Nazera Sadiq Wright is Associate Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2016), which won the 2018 Children’s Literature Association’s Honor Book Award for Outstanding Book of Literary Criticism. Her Digital Humanities project, DIGITAL GI(RL)S: Mapping Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century documents the cultural activities of black girls living in Philadelphia in the nineteenth century. In 2019, she was elected to the American Antiquarian Society. Fellowships through the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the American Philosophical Society funded archival research for her second book manuscript in progress, Early African American Women Writers and Their Libraries.
Nazera Sadiq Wright
Ibi Zoboi
Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times best selling author of AMERICAN STREET, a National Book Award Finalist; PRIDE, a contemporary remix of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; and MY LIFE AS AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH, her middle-grade debut. She is also the co-author of the Walter Award and L.A. Times Book Prize-winning PUNCHING THE AIR with prison reform activist Dr. Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five, which was also shortlisted for the U.K.’s Yoto Carnegie Medal. Ibi is the editor of BLACK ENOUGH: STORIES OF BEING YOUNG & BLACK IN AMERICA. Her debut picture book, THE PEOPLE REMEMBER, received a Coretta Scott King Book Honor Award. Her most recent books are STAR CHILD: A BIOGRAPHICAL CONSTELLATION OF OCTAVIA ESTELLE BUTLER, and OKOYE TO THE PEOPLE: A BLACK PANTHER NOVEL for Marvel.
Ibi has appeared on CBS This Morning and The Reid Out alongside Yusef Salaam, and on PBS’s Book View Now. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. As an educator, she was the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti. She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in New York City, Ibi lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and their three children.
Photo credit: Nicole Mondestin Photography
Ibi Zoboi
Poetry Café Participants
Angela Du
Angela Du is a young poet, actress, and model. Angela grew up in the New York City Metro area. Her passion for writing sparked in the summer of 2022, when she attended her school’s summer poetry writing program. In 2024, she won first place in the 27th annual Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest with her poem "Stories of Us." Subsequently, she was invited to appear on ABC’s Good Morning America and shared her thoughts on her poem. The poem was also published on the Skipping Stones Magazine and the American Immigration Council website. In October 2024, she was interviewed by the poet and broadcast journalist Amanda Eke and is now a part of "The Poet Speaks with Amanda Eke," a TV show that is streaming on Heritage Broadcasting and Roku.
Angela Du
Kaiyah Ellison
Kaiyah Ellison is a college senior with a passion for weaving words into vibrant, thought-provoking stories and poetry. Currently pursuing a degree in English Literature, she draws inspiration from life’s fleeting moments and personal experiences; Her work has been featured in the Medgar Evers College literary journal as well. When not writing, Kaiyah enjoys exploring the newest library, immersing herself in music, and diving into a new book. As a spring author, she looks forward to sharing her voice and connecting with fellow poetry enthusiasts.
Kaiyah Ellison
Bonafide Rojas
Bonafide Rojas is a Poet, Musician & has five collections of poetry: Excelsior, Notes On The Return To The Island, Renovatio, When The City Sleeps and Pelo Bueno. He is a Mellon-Flamboyan Letras Boricuas Fellow & has appeared on Def Poetry Jam. He’s performed at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Bowery Ballroom, Konvent Zero Barcelona, Spoken Word Paris, Latinale Berlin/Hamburg & Festival De La Palabra Puerto Rico. He’s an avid collector of pop culture & only wears red socks.
Bonafide Rojas
Zora Satchel
Zora Satchel is a Black and Chinese American queer poet, editor, and cinephile who writes about food, sex, film, family, and friendship. Her work has been published in Honey Literary, Drunk Monkeys Magazine, Stone of Madness Press, and elsewhere. She was In Surreal Life and Emotional Historians Fellow for the summer of 2024 and the 2021 Winter/Spring Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She has performed with Brooklyn Poets, Blasian March, KGB Bar, Priyo, Glow in the City: Unplugged, and elsewhere.
Zora Satchel
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