“CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN: LOVE, LEGACY & MAGIC” – PANEL

NADINE PINEDE is the daughter of Haitian exiles from the Duvalier dictatorship. She created her own interdisciplinary major at Harvard University, then continued on to the University of Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. She also has an MFA in fiction and poetry and a Ph.D. from Indiana University.

NICOLA YOON is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Instructions for Dancing (Delacorte Press), Everything, Everything (Delacorte Press), and The Sun Is Also a Star (Delacorte Press). She is also a co-author of Blackout: A Novel (Quill Tree Books). Yoon is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Award recipient, a Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Award winner and the first Black woman to hit No. 1 on NYT's young adult bestseller list. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She’s also the co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. Yoon grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.