Guest Speakers

2022 Keynote Speaker

Rita Williams-Garcia

2022 Keynote Speaker

Rita Williams-Garcia, a Queens, New York native, is the celebrated author of novels for young adults and middle grade readers. Her most recent middle grade 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 Coretta Scott King Author Award winning Gaither Sisters trilogy that begins with One Crazy Summer, recipient of the Newbery Honor and the Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction. She is both a three-time Coretta Scott King Author Award recipient and National Book Award Finalist. Her recent YA historical novel, A Sitting in St. James, is the winner of the 2021 Boston Globe Horn Book and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize awards.

Visit Rita at www.ritawg.com.

2022 Success Story Speaker

Each year a formerly unpublished conference attendee, who has gone on to publish in the field of children's literature, shares his or her experience with aspiring authors and illustrators.

Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo

2022 Success Story Speaker

Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo is the author of Each of Us a Universe, A Galaxy of Sea Stars, and Ruby in the Sky, which earned two starred reviews and which Booklist called "quietly magical." She is also a volunteer with IRIS-Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services in New Haven, Connecticut. She lives in Ellington, Connecticut, with her family. Visit her at www.jzulferr.com.

2022 Keynote Speaker

Rita Williams-Garcia

2022 Success Story Speaker

Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo

Previous Keynote Speakers

Previous Success Story Speakers