Authors

MEG MEDINA is the Library of Congress’ 2023-2024 national ambassador for young people’s literature and the author of the Newbery Medal-winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears (Candlewick). She is also the author of award-winning young adult novels and picture books, including Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away (Candlewick), illustrated by Sonia Sánchez; Mango, Abuela, and Me (Candlewick), illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Award honor book; and Tía Isa Wants a Car (Candlewick), illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award for new writers. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she lives in Richmond, Virginia.

PABLO MEDINA was born in Havana and raised in New York City. He is the author of many published works, including poetry, fiction, and works in translation, most recently Sea of Broken Mirrors: Poems (Hanging Loose Press). Medina’s prose and poetry have been translated into various languages, including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Arabic. His work has appeared in many journals, among them The New Yorker, TriQuarterly, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, and more. He has received several awards and honors for his writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cintas Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and others. Medina is currently on faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and divides his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Newfane, Vermont.

CHRIS MEINDL is a geography professor and the director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus, where he has worked since 2003. A native Floridian, Meindl has spent much time in the state's public lands, including Ocala National Forest and Juniper Springs. After teaching high school and earning master's degrees in history from San Diego State University and geography from the University of North Dakota, he returned home to Florida where he met his wife Kathleen and worked on a Ph.D., studying the historical geography of the Everglades. His latest book is Florida Springs: From Geography to Politics and Restoration (University Press of Florida).

COCO MELLORS grew up in London and New York, where she received her MFA in fiction from New York University. Her debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein (Bloomsbury Publishing), a Sunday Times bestseller, has been translated into more than 15 languages and is currently being adapted for television. She lives with her husband and son in New York.

YAMILE SAIED MÉNDEZ is the author of many books for young readers and adults, including Furia, a Reese’s YA Book Club selection and the 2021 Inaugural Pura Belpré Young Adult Gold Medalist; Where Are You From?; Shaking Up the House; and the Horse Country series, among others. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains in Utah. She’s a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of Latine writers.

ARMANDO MENDIVE has been a teacher for more than 30 years, the last 27 at Monsignor Edward Pace High School in Miami Gardens/Opa-locka, Florida, where he teaches all levels of world and American history, human geography, government, and economics. He has an M.A. in history from Florida International University. He has been married to his college sweetheart for almost 25 years and together they have two children, three rescue cats, and a rescue dog.

DINAW MENGESTU, author of Someone Like Us: A Novel (Knopf), has written three previous novels, all of them named Notable Books by The New York Times: All Our Names, How to Read the Air, and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. His articles and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and other publications. A native of Ethiopia who came to the United States with his family at the age of 2, Mengestu is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, and a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree.

CLAIRE MESSUD is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

BEN MEZRICH is The New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (Anchor), which was adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film The Social Network; Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (Atria Books), which was adapted into the No. 1 box-office hit film 21; The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees (Grand Central Publishing); and many other bestsellers. His books have sold more than 6 million copies worldwide.

CLÉMENCE MICHALLON, author of The Quiet Tenant: A Novel (Vintage), was born and raised near Paris. She studied journalism at City University of London, received a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, and wrote for The Independent for several years before going freelance in 2024. Her essays and features have covered true crime, celebrity culture, and literature. She moved to New York City in 2014 and recently became a U.S. citizen. She now divides her time between New York City and Rhinebeck, New York.

GLORIA MILÁDELAROCA, nacida en Caracas, Venezuela y radicada en Miami, Florida. Poeta y creadora visual de trazos en blanco y negro. Ha participado en exposiciones en Venezuela, Miami, Colombia y España. Participó en la antología Aquí {Ellas} en Miami, selección de poetas miamenses (Katakana Editores, 2018). Poemas suyos han sido publicados arrera revistas digitales e impresas. Tiene varios libros inéditos de poemas y haikus. Es miembro arrera en Nagari Foundation, Inc., Katakana Editores y la revista Nagari, ediciones impresa y digital. Este año participa en la presentación del libro Agua sagrada de Rubí Arana en su arrera bilingüe, con el cual se dará un homenaje póstumo a la vida y obra de la poeta nicaragüense, con la participación de escritores cercanos a la artista, que compartirán sus poemas y anécdotas más preciadas.

TIYA MILES is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She was the founder and director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program and is the author of The New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning All That She Carried. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her latest book is Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Significations) (Penguin Press).

EMILE BLAIR MILGRIM (she/they) is a sound designer, musician, and teaching artist who grew up in Miami in the 1980s and ‘90s immersed in all music she could find, from classical to freestyle. She spent the early aughts in Portland, Oregon, playing drums in basement bands, running a record label (Other Electricities), and working as an independent music promoter/publicist. In 2011 she returned to Miami, where she continues to play drums in bands (no basements), still runs Other Electricities, DJs, teaches, and develops collaborative programs/projects with a perpetual love of music and sound as the catalyst. Much of the work she creates is inspired by South Florida’s landscape and the unique experiences continually encountered and shared within it. Currently she is an active member of Las Nubes, Mr. Entertainment and the Pookiesmackers, Archival Feedback, and MiamiBloco’s Bateria Saideira, and volunteers with Miami Girls Rock Camp, an organization she co-founded in 2014.

SUSAN MINOT is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her debut novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her novel Evening was a worldwide bestseller and became a major motion picture. Her most recent book is Don't Be A Stranger: A Novel (Knopf). She lives with her daughter in New York City and on an island off the coast of Maine.

Originally from Colombia and raised in Florida, MELISSA MOGOLLON holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a B.A. from George Washington University. She now teaches at a boarding school in Rhode Island, where she lives with her partner and dog. Oye: A Novel (Hogarth) is her debut work of fiction.

JANA MONROE, a co-founder of and at the time the only female agent in the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) at Quantico, Virginia, had a distinguished 22-year career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During that time, she served as special agent in charge in Phoenix and Los Angeles and became the first assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. Through her work, she and her BSU colleagues crossed paths with Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, Aileen Wuornos, and hundreds of other notorious killers. Monroe, now retired, is the BSU analyst upon whom Jodie Foster's character was modeled in The Silence of the Lambs film; she even helped train Foster for the role. Hearts of Darkness: Serial Killers, the Behavioral Science Unit, and My Life as a Woman in the FBI (Abrams Press) is her debut work.

GINA MONTANER Periodista y escritora. Desde hace 40 años publica una columna semanal en diversos periódicos en América Latina y también en El Nuevo Herald. Colaboradora del diario español El Mundo. Trabajó en CNN+ (Madrid), la cadena Telemundo y Telemundo 51 (Miami), donde se desempeñó como Managing Editor. Tiene en su haber más de ocho Premios Emmy (noticias). Autora de la novela La mala fama (2009). En 2006 coordinó y prologó Un día sin inmigrantes (Grijalbo). Se licenció en literatura iberoamericana en Barnard College, Columbia University (Nueva York). Actualmente vive en Madrid. Presenta este año en la Feria Deséenme buen viaje (Planeta), una crónica íntima de la trayectoria sin retorno del periodista y escritor Carlos Alberto Montaner, padre de la autora, y la suya junto a él, con el trasfondo de la eutanasia. La obra sigue a padre e hija a través de un camino lleno de obstáculos e incertidumbre; pero también hace un recorrido extraordinario por las emociones, la comunión íntima y la perseverancia frente a la adversidad. Cuenta un viaje del desarraigo – las señas de identidad de una familia marcada por el exilio tras el triunfo de la revolución en Cuba – hacia el arraigo que significó para Gina retornar a España, su segunda patria.

THURSTON MOORE is a founding member of Sonic Youth, a band born in New York in 1981 that spent 30 years at the vanguard of alternative rock, influencing and inspiring acts such as Nirvana, Pavement, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine, and Beck. The band’s album “Daydream Nation” was selected by the Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. Moore is involved in publishing and poetry, and teaches at the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He divides his time between the U.S. and England.

HONOR MOORE is the author of A Termination (Public Space Books) and seven previous books, including the memoirs The Bishop's Daughter and Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury, and three collections of poems. For the Library of America, she edited Poems from the Women's Movement and Women's Liberation!: Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution and Still Can. She lives in New York City, where she teaches in the MFA program at the New School.

GEAN MORENO is the director of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center at ICA Miami. He is also is the founder and current co-director of [NAME] Publications, a press dedicated to art and design theory. Moreno has organized exhibitions dedicated to the work of Hélio Oiticica (2017), Terry Adkins (2017), Shuvinai Ashoona (2022), Larry Bell (2019), Ettore Sottsass (2019), and others. He has also contributed texts to various catalogs and publications, including e-flux journal, Kaleidoscope, and Art in America, and edited the anthology Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art (Verso). His Carlos Alfonzo: Late Paintings (William Morrow Paperbacks) is the first monograph dedicated to the artist in more than 25 years and is a companion to ICA Miami’s exhibition “Carlos Alfonzo: Late Paintings.” and fills a historical gap in the arts with newly commissioned scholarship, materials from the archives, and a comprehensive selection of paintings. The first part of the book provides the most comprehensive gathering of Alfonzo’s last works – including those responding to the AIDS crisis and his deep exploration of art historical tropes. The second part focuses on pieces from the rest of his career, from drawings and sculptures that he produced in Havana in the late 1970s to the dynamic compositions that brought him international recognition in the '80s.

JUAN A. MORENO-VELÁZQUEZ Juan A. Moreno-Velázquez es un periodista galardonado especializado en el mundo del espectáculo y la comunidad latina. Sus incisivos reportajes le valieron el Primer Premio de la Asociación Nacional de Publicaciones Hispanas por su cobertura de La Lupe, que inspiró la serie documental La leyenda de La Lupe y la obra teatral La Lupe: mi vida, mi destino. En 2003, recibió el prestigioso Primer Premio de los 100 Mejores Medios Hispanos. Graduado de la Universidad de Nueva York y de la Escuela Graduada de Comunicaciones Públicas de la Universidad de Fordham, ha realizado una considerables investigaciones sobre la industria musical latina y es considerado un musicólogo de renombre especializado en música tropical y jazz. Juan es un ex profesor de la Universidad del Sagrado Corazón en Santurce, Puerto Rico, y enseñó investigación social en el Boricua College de Nueva York. Como periodista, fue editor de entretenimiento de El Diario-La Prensa, el diario de mayor antigüedad de idioma español de la ciudad de Nueva York. Fue autor de la aclamada columna semanal Cuadrando en Cuadrante, que se especializaba en la radio comercial y su tratamiento de temas latinos. Es autor de Desmitificación de una diva: La verdad sobre de La Lupe (2003) –obra adquirida este año para un proyecto cinematográfico de Hollywood–, La Reina es La Rumba: por siempre Celia (2006), Maelo: Hijo de Borikén, Rey de los Soneros (2016) y Tres de Café, Dos de Azúcar y Ponle ¡SALSA! Mi Vida de Johny Pacheco (2023), libro que María Elena Pacheco presenta este año en la Feria.

SARETTA MORGAN was born in Appalachia and raised on military installations. She’s interested in the ecologies and intimacies that materialize in the shadows of U.S. militarization. Morgan is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative and organizes with the grassroots humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths and with About Face: Veterans Against the War.

WANDA M. MORRIS has written two previous novels: All Her Little Secrets and Anywhere You Run, which won the Anthony Award for Best Historical Novel of 2023 and was longlisted for the Mark Twain Voice in American Literature Prize. Her new thriller is What You Leave Behind: A Novel (William Morrow).

SUSAN MUADDI DARRAJ is the author of A Curious Land, winner of the American Book Award and a finalist for the Palestine Book Award. She is also the author of the Farah Rocks children’s book series, the first to feature a Palestinian American character. Muaddi Darraj is a United States Artists Ford Fellow and past winner of the Maryland State Arts Council’s Independent Artist Award. Her latest book is Behind You Is the Sea: A Novel (HarperVia), about the lives of three Palestinian immigrant families. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Harford Community College and Johns Hopkins University.

LAURA TAYLOR NAMEY, author of With Love, Echo Park (Atheneum Books for Young Readers), is a New York Times and international bestselling writer of young adult fiction, including A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, which has been adapted for film, and A British Girl's Guide to Hurricanes and Heartbreak. She is a winner of the Peggy Miller Award for excellence in young adult fiction.  She lives in San Diego with her husband and two children.

DANICA NAVA is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and works as an executive assistant in the tech industry. She has an MBA from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Nava currently lives in Southern California with her husband and daughter. The Truth According to Ember (Berkley) is her debut novel. You can find her on Instagram at the handle @danica_nava.

ED NAWOTKA is the senior bookselling and international editor of Publishers Weekly.

NEMONTE NENQUIMO, a leader of the Waorani people, is one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism and the co-founder of the Ceibo Alliance. She is a winner of the 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize and was named to Time's "100 Most Influential People of 2020" list. Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, Nenquimo was taught about medicinal plants, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. At age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. She returned and embraced her culture, and since then she has fiercely battled loggers, miners, oil companies, and missionaries. She has led the alliance of Indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon and her people to a landmark victory against Big Oil, protecting more than a half-million acres of primary rainforest.