Authors

Zoraida Córdova is the author of more than a dozen novels, most recently the Brooklyn Brujas series, The Vicious Deep trilogy, The Way to Rio Luna, and Star Wars: A Crash of Fate. She is the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Vampires Never Get Old and the co-host of the podcast Deadline City. Córdova was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and raised in Queens, New York. The title character of Valentina Salazar is not a Monster Hunter (Scholastic Press) is part of a family of protectors. The Salazars rescue the magical creatures who sometimes wander into our world, from grumpy unicorns and chupacabras to the occasional fire-breathing chipmunk. But when her dad dies during a rescue mission, her mother decides it’s time to retire. She moves the family to a little town in upstate New York and enrolls Val and her siblings in a real school for the first time. Even so, Valentina just can’t give up her calling, and when a mythical egg surfaces in a viral video she knows she must find it before it hatches and wreaks havoc. She must also ward off the dreaded monster hunters who will stop at nothing to destroy it – and threaten her family.

Valeria Correa Fiz (Rosario, Argentina) Poeta y narradora. Hace más de quince años que vive fuera de Argentina, siempre en ciudades que empiezan con eme: Miami, Milán, México y Madrid, en esta última reside actualmente. Es autora de los libros de relatos La condición animal (Páginas de Espuma, 2016), que fue seleccionado para el IV Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel García Márquez y el Premio Setenil 2017, y Hubo un jardín (Páginas de Espuma, 2022). Ha publicado los poemarios El álbum oscuro, distinguido como finalista del I Premio de Poesía Manuel del Cabral, 2016; El invierno a deshoras (Hiperión, 2017), merecedor del XI Premio Internacional de Poesía Claudio Rodríguez; Museo de pérdidas (Ediciones La Palma, 2020) y Así el deseo (plaquette, Editorial BGR, 2021). Algunos de sus relatos y poemas han sido recogidos en diversas antologías y traducidos al inglés, italiano, hebreo y rumano. Coordina el Club de Lectura del Instituto Cervantes de Milán e imparte talleres de escritura creativa en Milán y Madrid. Correa Fiz dio a conocer en 2021 Hubo un jardín, editado por Páginas de espuma, donde reúne siete cuentos que exploran las relaciones de los protagonistas con la naturaleza exterior y su mundo interior.

Ellis Cose is the author of a dozen books on issues of national and international concern, including the bestselling The Rage of a Privileged Class. He has served as a columnist and contributing editor of Newsweek, editor page chief for the New York Daily News, and contributor and columnist for numerous major publications, including USA Today and Time. He has received fellowships at the National Research Council/National Academy of Science, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, among others. In Race and Reckoning: From Founding Fathers to Today’s Disruptors (Amistad), Cose addresses chattel slavery and the New Deal to the COVID pandemic, exploring how pivotal decisions have established and perpetuated discriminatory practices. Meanwhile, the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques has plunged democracy into an ever-deepening crisis. American politicians have waxed eloquently and endlessly about bettering the nation. But improving it for whom? asks Cose. This is a story grounded in history, one that demolishes the myths that ultimately allowed one of the most ill-prepared, unethical, vindictive, and truth-challenged politicians in the country’s history to present himself as a savior by tapping into America’s darkest tendencies.

Imogen Crimp studied English at Cambridge and earned an M.A. in contemporary literature from University College London, where she specialized in female modernist writers. After university, she briefly studied singing at a London conservatory. Anna, the central character in her debut A Very Nice Girl: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co.), doesn’t fit in. Not with her wealthy classmates at the London Conservatory where she unexpectedly wins a place after university, not with the family she left behind, and definitely not with Max, a man she meets in the bar where she sings for cash. He’s everything she’s not – rich, tailored to precision, impossible to read – and soon, Anna is hooked, desperate to hold his attention and determined to ignore the warning signs that this might be a toxic relationship. As Anna shuttles from grueling rehearsals to brutal auditions, she finds herself torn between two conflicting desires: the drive to nurture her fledgling singing career and the longing for human connection. But her infatuation with Max starts to turn her away from the former. The roles she’s playing – both on stage and off – begin to feel all-consuming, and she risks losing sight of herself completely.

Jennifer Croft won the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 Booker International Prize for her translation of Nobel Prize and International Booker Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. Croft is also the translator of Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob: A Novel (Riverhead Books), based on the life of Jacob Frank, an actual mid-18th-century historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day. After arriving mysteriously in Poland, he would traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic, and revered as the Messiah. Narrated by his contemporaries – some who revere him, others who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is – The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.

Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections I Was Told There’d Be Cake, How Did You Get This Number, and Look Alive Out There, and the bestselling novel The Clasp. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Interview, The Village Voice, Vanity Fair – where she is a contributing editor – the Independent, Black Book, Departures, and The New York Observer. One night in New York City’s Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And another. Nothing is quite what it seems in a city awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What might pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger, and memories swirl and converge in ways both comic and eerie. Equal parts page-turner and poignant portrayal of alienation, Cult Classic: A Novel (MCD) asks: Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips, and sanity is for sale?

Angie Cruz is the author of the novels Soledad, Let It Rain Coffee, and Dominicana, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and a Good Morning America Book Club pick. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts journal, and is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Cara Romero, the protagonist of Cruz’s How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water: A Novel (Flatiron Books), thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. For 12 sessions, she recounts her turbulent love affairs; her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela; her struggles with debt, gentrification, and loss; and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.

Larry Csonka is a former professional American football fullback and Super Bowl MVP who played for the Miami Dolphins and, briefly, the New York Giants. He is a Hall of Famer, a two-time Super Bowl champion, and a member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only team in NFL history to win the title undefeated, 17-0. In Head On: A Memoir (Matt Holt), Csonka pulls back the curtain to share how he and the team achieved their perfect season. A gifted storyteller with an authentic voice, Csonka writes about quitting football at a young age, his often-combative relationship with coach Don Shula, his exploits with his NFL pals, and hanging out with stars like Elvis Presley and Burt Reynolds. But more at home in the wilderness than on a football field, his moments outside the spotlight reveal the most about this larger-than-life figure. Csonka writes about raising hell in his formative years on an Ohio dirt farm, having early run-ins with the law, confronting thieves with a sawed-off shotgun, and being adrift at night on the Bering Sea with gale-force winds raging. Head On speaks of a life lived with the same audacity and authority with which he ran the football.

María Cueto (La Habana, Cuba) Educadora. Graduada en la Universidad de La Habana en Lengua y Literatura inglesa con una especialidad en Lingüística. Posee una maestría en Lengua y Literatura inglesas. Durante veinte años impartió clases en la Facultad de Lenguas Extranjeras de la Universidad de La Habana y fue coautora de dos manuales sobre la metodología de la enseñanza del inglés. Al radicarse en la ciudad de Miami ejerció como docente en la Florida National University y en el Miami Dade College. Más tarde pasó a trabajar en el Departamento de Educación bilingüe y Lenguas extranjeras de las Escuelas Públicas del Condado Miami Dade. En 2010, el estado de la Florida le concedió el Premio a la Excelencia en la Educación. Coordina la mesa Literatura infantil de Bolivia en el 9.º Seminario de Literatura infantil y Lectura.

Mayra Cuevas is the Puerto Rican-born author of the YA novel Salty, Bitter, Sweet and her short story Resilient was included in the anthology Foreshadow. She is also a producer for CNN and co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival. Does My Body Offend You? (Knopf Books for Young Readers), co-authored with Marie Marquardt, tells the story of Malena Rosario and Ruby McAllister. When Malena – a Puerto Rican girl stuck in Florida after Hurricane María destroyed her home – goes to school bra-less after a bad sunburn and is humiliated by the school administration into covering up, Ruby just can’t keep quiet about it. She’s a Seattle girl with a reputation as the school’s outspoken feminist. Malena and Ruby didn’t expect to be the leaders of a school rebellion, but that’s where they find themselves. Still, they’ll have to face their insecurities, biases, and privileges if they want to stand up for their ideals and – ultimately – themselves.

Kim Daly writes about pop culture, true crime, and mystery when not working as copy chief at Workman Publishing. She holds a master’s degree with a focus on trauma studies and previously worked as a rape crisis counselor. Compiled by Daly, The True Crime File: Serial Killers, Famous Kidnappings, Great Cons, Survivors & Their Stories, Forensics, Oddities & Absurdities, Quotes & Quizzes (Workman Publishing Company) is a mini encyclopedia of true crime, featuring more than 200 stories of killers, con artists, master thieves, brazen kidnappers, survivors, detectives, forensic breakthroughs, and legal minds. There are big names that include Bundy, Manson, Berkowitz, Borden, and the Black Dahlia. It also includes lingering mysteries – like the deaths of JonBenet Ramsey and Natalie Wood – the disturbing puzzle of the Zodiac Killer, and the true story behind the most lurid headline ever: “Headless Body in the Topless Bar.” The True Crime File offers a feast of trivia, including the psychopath test, how DNA profiling began, tattoo analysis, and quizzes like “Where Did They Hide?” and “Serial Killer Trophies.”

Julie C. Dao is a Vietnamese American author of many books for teens and children, including Forest of a Thousand Lanterns and Broken Wish. Her novels have earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly; won recognition as Junior Library Guild Selections and Kids’ Indie Next List picks; and landed on multiple best-of-year lists, including YALSA and the American Library Association. In Team Chu and the Battle for Blackwood Arena (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR), Clip and Sadie Chu couldn’t be more different. Popular, athletic Clip wants to become his school’s first seventh-grade soccer captain. Brainy star student Sadie is determined to prove that she can do anything her boastful brother can. But they share a love for laser tag. When the Blackwood Gaming Arena comes to town, bringing virtual reality headsets and state-of-the-art courses, they couldn’t be more excited – or competitive. But when a mysterious figure appears, it forces the Chus and their friends to save themselves from a sinister force lurking inside the simulation. Soon, they’re fighting their way through epic battlegrounds that test their speed, skills, and smarts. But will Clip and Sadie work together rather than competing for the ultimate victory?

Kyle Dargan is the author of five poetry collections, including Anagnorisis: Poems, The Listening, Bouquet of Hungers, Logorrhea Dementia, and Honest Engine. His poems and nonfiction have appeared in newspapers such as The Newark Star-Ledger and in journals including Callaloo, Denver Quarterly, and Ploughshares, among others. In 2019 he received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. He will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 to moderate a conversation with Kien Lam, author of Extinction Theory (University of Georgia Press), as part of the Fair’s National Poetry Series program.

Darius V. Daughtry is a writer, director, educator, and the founder of the Art Prevails Project. His poetry collection, And the Walls Came Tumbling, was published by Omiokun Books in 2019.

Jack E. Davis is a professor of environmental history at the University of Florida, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea and An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. In The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird (Liveright), Davis takes readers from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species. He contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others – whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides – twice pushed the species to the brink of extinction. Americans have celebrated the bald eagle as majestic and noble, yet savaged this national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Filled with stories of Founding Fathers, The Bald Eagle is a cultural and natural history demonstrating how this bird’s wondrous journey may inspire us today as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.

Liliana de la Quintana (Sucre, Bolivia, 1959) Comunicadora, realizadora de videos, guionista, escritora de libros para niños y gestora cultural. Cofundadora, en 1981, de Producciones Nicobis, donde trabaja desde hace cuarenta y dos años como directora de Proyectos. Ha escrito treinta y dos libros destinados a los niños para varias colecciones, entre ellas, Mitología indígena de Bolivia (La abuela Grillo y Los wawa libros) y la colección Urucú de cuentos. Su obra ha sido incluida en antologías nacionales e internacionales. Cofundadora y miembro de la Academia Boliviana de Literatura infantil y juvenil. Ha sido jurado en concursos nacionales e internacionales de libros para niños y jóvenes. Escribe reseñas de libros destinadas a los pequeños lectores en suplementos culturales de periódicos bolivianos. Ha realizado varias investigaciones sobre diversos temas relacionados con la literatura infantil y juvenil. Ha obtenido premios y reconocimientos nacionales e internacionales. Ha realizado más de cincuenta videos (documentales, materiales de ficción y animación), logrando numerosos premios en Bolivia y fuera del país. Cofundadora y directora del Festival internacional del audiovisual para la niñez y adolescencia KOLIBRI. Editora en jefe del primer noticiero de televisión para niños PICA. Forma parte de la mesa Literatura infantil de Bolivia del 9.º Seminario de Literatura infantil y Lectura.

Pablo De Santis (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963) Narrador. Se graduó como licenciado en Letras en la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Trabajó como periodista y guionista de historietas. Ha publicado, entre otros libros, las novelas La traducción (1998), Filosofía y Letras (1999), El teatro de la memoria (2001), El calígrafo de Voltaire (2002), La sexta lámpara (2005), El enigma de París (2007, Premio Planeta-Casa de América), Los anticuarios (2010), Crímenes y jardines (2013) y La hija del criptógrafo (2017), todos con editorial Planeta. Sus cuentos están reunidos en los volúmenes Rey secreto (2005) y Trasnoche (2013). Entre sus obras para los jóvenes lectores cabe mencionar Lucas Lenz y el Museo del Universo (1992), Enciclopedia en la hoguera (1995), El inventor de juegos (2003), El buscador de finales (2011), Leyra (2018) y Hotel acantilado (2021). Ha recibido el Premio Konex de platino 2004, el Premio de Novela de la Academia Argentina de Letras 2008 y el Premio Nacional de Cultura 2012, otorgado por el Ministerio de Cultura de su país. Su álbum de historietas El hipnotizador (con dibujos de Juan Sáenz Valiente) ha dado origen a la serie homónima (HBO, 2015) y su novela El inventor de juegos llegó al cine en 2014, dirigida por Juan Pablo Buscarini. Es miembro de número de la Academia Argentina de Letras. A nuestra cita literaria, De Santis trae Academia Belladona, Planeta, 2021, novela protagonizada por Duncan Dix, un joven cegado por el deseo de vengar la muerte de sus padres, quien ingresa a una escuela de criminales localizada en el Londres de la década de 1930. Este autor de libros para niños y jóvenes también participa en el 9.º Seminario de Literatura Infantil y Lectura en la mesa Retos de escribir para jóvenes.

Florencia del Campo (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1982) Narradora, poeta y editora. Desde 2013 vive en Madrid. Es editora de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, donde también se formó en la carrera de Letras. Publicó las novelas La huésped (Base Editorial, 2016) y Madre mía (Caballo de Troya, 2017). En poesía ha dado a conocer los libros Mis hijas ajenas, ganador del Premio La Bolsa de Pipas, de la Editorial Sloper, y Las casas se caen en verano (Graviola, 2022). En el año de la pandemia salió su primera novela juvenil: Soy (Editorial Barrett, 2020). A nuestra feria, Del Campo arriba con La versión extranjera, novela con la que obtuvo el Premio Internacional Ciudad de Barbastroque, publicada por Pretextos, en la que describe el viaje realizado por una mujer a Estados Unidos para reencontrarse con su familia y hacer el intento de cerrar una vieja herida, solo que los recuerdos, al ser muy confusos, tanto para ella como para los demás, se lo impiden.

Pilar del Río (Sevilla, España, 1950) Periodista, traductora y escritora. Actualmente reside en Lisboa. Trabajó en TVE y Canal Sur. En 1986 conoció al escritor portugués José Saramago, Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1998, y se casó con él en 1988. Se establecieron primero en Lisboa y más tarde en Lanzarote, Islas Canarias. Tradujo al español las novelas de su esposo a partir de Todos los nombres. Obtuvo el premio Luso-Español de Arte y Cultura, concedido por la Biblioteca Nacional de España en 2017. Preside la Fundación José Saramago con sede en Lisboa. Tiene la ciudadanía portuguesa desde 2010. Es autora del libro La intuición de la isla (2022). Del Río participa en el Homenaje a Saramago por el centenario de su nacimiento.

Grethel Delgado Álvarez (La Habana, Cuba, 1987). Dramaturga y periodista. Vive en Miami. Licenciada en Dramaturgia por el Instituto Superior de Arte en Cuba. Expresidente de la Fundación Antonio Gala, España. Tiene una maestría en Periodismo en la Florida International University. Ha publicado los libros de teatro 1987 (2012), Mariposas (2011) y Mi familia ideal (2009) y, además, el volumen de poesía Necesidad de los cultos (2009). Fue finalista del VII Premio Internacional Aura Estrada de narrativa (2021). En el género teatral, obtuvo el Premio de la Universidad de La Laguna en su XVII edición (2014), así como los premios Calendario (2012), Pinos Nuevos (2011) y David (2009). Interviene en la mesa Hablemos Escritoras.

Sally Denton is the author of eight books, including The Profiteers Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World; The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right; the bestseller The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs and Murder; and is the co-author of a classic account of Las Vegas, The Money and the Power. On November 4, 2019, masked gunmen ambushed a caravan of women and children on a desolate road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Nine people died; five were gravely injured. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities – fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late 19th century. In The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land (Liveright), Denton picks up where the initial reporting on the attacks ended and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. The patriarchs believed the Sinaloa cartel targeted them; others suspected the attack was part of a dispute over water rights with local farmers. For Denton, a descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, this is more than a crime story.

Victor Deupi is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Miami School of Architecture. His research focuses on the Early Modern Spanish and Ibero-American world, mid-20th-century Cuba, and contemporary architecture. His books include Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759 (Routledge, 2015), Transformations in Classical Architecture: New Directions in Research and Practice (Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2018), Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America (Routledge, 2020), and Cuban Modernism: Mid-Century Architecture 1940-1970, with Jean-Francois Lejeune (Birkhäuser Verlag, 2021). Dr. Deupi was also the President of the CINTAS Foundation dedicated to promoting Cuban art and culture from 2016-2018.

Jeff Deutsch is the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which in 2019 he helped incorporate as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling. His tome In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton University Press) is an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of such entities. Do we need bookstores in the 21st century? And if so, what makes a good one? Here, Deutsch pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. Along the way, he also predicts – perhaps audaciously – a future in which the bookstore not only endures but also realizes its highest aspirations. In exploring why good bookstores matter, he draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller and his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores – it’s an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities lucky enough to have them.

Hernan Diaz’s first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.  He has also written a book of essays, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. In Trust: A Novel (Riverhead Books), it’s the 1920s and everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth – all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Diaz puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another, and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

Ruth Dickey is the executive director of the National Book Foundation. She has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art. Since 2013 she has also served as executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL), which brings the best writers and thinkers to Seattle stages and classrooms.

Mc. Donald Dixon is a playwright, poet, painter, and photographer born in St. Lucia, West Indies. He is the author of three previous novels – Season of Mist, Misbegotten, and Saints of Little Paradise: Book One ‘Eden Defiled’ – a short story collection, Careme and other Stories; and several volumes of poetry, including Beloved country and other poems and Collected Poems 1961-2001. A Scream in the Shadows (Papillote Press) is a crime story set in the rural Caribbean. Here, traditional allegiances and a flawed criminal justice system provide a backdrop to the rape and murder of a young girl. When her father is accused of the crime, her brother joins the police to try and clear their father’s name. While the suspect languishes in jail on remand, the young detective investigates other suspects. His mother remains loyal to her husband, but does anyone else and who – if anyone – knows the truth?

Tony Dokoupil is a co-host of CBS Mornings. He also anchors The Uplift on the CBS News Streaming Network. Previously, he was a CBS News correspondent and a CBS News Sunday Morning contributor. As a correspondent for CBS News, he has written about marijuana legalization, digital privacy, and the Second Amendment. From 2007 to 2013, Dokoupil was a senior writer at Newsweek and the Daily Beast. Dokoupil is also the author of The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana, a memoir in which he documented his father’s exploits smuggling marijuana during the 1970s and ‘80s. He will appear at Miami Book Fair 2022 in conversation with journalist and author Katy Tur.

Aurora Dominguez is an educator and writer based in Hollywood, Florida. She worked as an editor and writer at such places as the Miami Herald and Where magazine before moving from the newsroom to the classroom. Currently, she contributes as a reviewer and writer for places such as Booklist. She also recently received a full scholarship to attend Oxford University in England, was a top 50 Disney Teacher in the United States, and won the honor of being Teacher of the Year at Boca Raton High School in 2022. She will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 to moderate “I Will Survive: Deadly Curses, Deadly Games,” a panel on YA fantasy books.

Alex Dudok de Wit is the associate editor at Cartoon Brew and an animation correspondent for Sight & Sound. His writing has also appeared in Vulture, Little White Lies, The Telegraph, The i, The Independent, Time Out, Index on Censorship, and elsewhere, including specialist animation publications like Skwigly and ASIFA Magazine. He also translates from Japanese as part of the Art Translators Collective. He is the translator of Shuna’s Journey (First Second), a new manga classic created by Hayao Miyazaki, the internationally award-winning animator creator of 11 features. Shuna’s Journey follows a prince of a poor land on a quest for a golden grain that will save his people. Shuna watches the harvesting of what little grain grows in his kingdom in despair. When a traveler shows him seeds from a mysterious western land, he sets out to find the source of the life-saving golden grain. He meets a girl named Thea while on his journey and frees her from her captors and she escapes to the north. Shuna continues toward the west and reaches the Land of the God-Folk. But will he ever see Thea again? And will he make it back home with the grain?

Tananarive Due is an academic and author whose books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. Her collaborator and husband, Steven Barnes, is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 novels. In their collaboration The Keeper (Harry N. Abrams), illustrated by Marco Finnegan, Aisha has lost her parents in a car crash, and now she must move to decrepit and derelict Detroit to live with her ailing grandmother. But shortly after Aisha’s move, her grandmother’s health rapidly deteriorates. With her dying breath, she summons the dark spirit that has protected their family for generations to watch over her granddaughter. At first, it seems that this spirit, the Keeper, is doing what it was asked. But Aisha finds that this being can only sustain itself by stealing life from others, and she and her friends must come together to destroy it or die trying.