Friday, April 8, 12:00–1:30 PM
Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 4
PLA is pleased to partner with We Need Diverse Books™ (weneeddiversebooks.org) to bring a panel of YA authors to the conference. This lunch program will be moderated by I.W. Gregorio and feature Lamar Giles (Edgar® Award Nominee for Fake ID), e.E. Charlton-Trujillo (Stonewall winner for Fat Angie), and Sara Farizan (Lambda Literary Award winner for If You Could Be Mine). Don’t miss this unique opportunity!
I.W. Gregorio is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. After getting her MD, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above (Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins), which is a Spring 2015 Publishers Weekly Flying Start and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books and previously served as its VP of development. A recovering ice hockey player, she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Find her online at www.iwgregorio.com, and on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram at @iwgregorio.
Lamar Giles writes novels and short stories for teens and adults. He is the author of the 2015 Edgar® Award Nominee Fake ID, a second YA thriller Endangered, a third, currently untitled YA novel from HarperCollins, as well as the forthcoming YA novel Overturned from Scholastic Press. Lamar Giles is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. He resides in Virginia with his wife. Check him out online at www.lamargiles.com or follow @LRGiles on Twitter.
Photo by Howard Wells III
Kirkus Reviews calls writer, filmmaker and artivist e.E. Charlton-Trujillo “a force of nature.” In 2013, she embarked on a unique book tour to empower at-risk youth through free writing workshops for several months. Her feature documentary At-Risk Summer chronicles this experience, showcasing raw and inspiring stories from youth, educators, librarians, and award-winning authors. Her third novel, Fat Angie, won the American Library Association’s 2014 Stonewall Award. That year, she and author C.G. Watson co-founded the nonprofit Never Counted Out to offer creative mentorship to at-risk youth. Her fourth novel When We Was Fierce will be published in 2016 by Candlewick Press.
Sara Farizan is the author of If You Could Be Mine and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. She is the recipient of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Children’s/Young Adult, the winner of two Publishing Triangle awards, and both of her novels are top 10’s on the ALA Rainbow list. Her debut novel was named one of Rolling Stone‘s Top 100 YA books of all time. She is the daughter of Iranian immigrants and lives in the Greater Boston area. She likes 80’s R&B, Kurosawa films, the Boston Celtics, and is incredible at lip-synching. You can follow her on Twitter at @SaraFarizan.
Ticket Cost: Registration for this special author event is now closed.
PLA thanks We Need Diverse Books for its support of this event.
