Children’s Literature Committee
Grace Lin
Grace Lin is the author and illustrator of more than a dozen picture books, including The Ugly Vegetables and Dim Sum for Everyone! Also an author of middle grade fiction, Grace’s 2010 Newbery Honor book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was chosen for Al Roker’s Today Show Kid’s Book Club and was a NY Times Bestseller. While most of Grace’s books are about the Asian-American experience, she believes, “Books erase bias, they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal.” (www.gracelin.com)
Kekla Magoon, Chair
Kekla Magoon is a New York City-based author, editor, speaker and educator. Her debut novel, The Rock and the River (Aladdin, 2009), won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, in addition to being named an ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults. Kekla is Co-Editor of YA and Children’s Literature for Hunger Mountain, the arts journal of Vermont College of Fine Arts. She also leads writing workshops for youth and adults, and writes non-fiction titles for the educational market. Kekla holds a B.A. in History from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. (www.keklamagoon.com).
Katie Williams
Katie Williams’s first YA novel, The Space Between Trees, was released by Chronicle Books in 2010. Her short stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Atlantic, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from University of Texas at Austin and now teaches and writes in San Francisco.
