Young Adult Presenters

More presenters will be added in the weeks to come.
The detailed session schedule will be available in late August.

 

Young Adult Presenters

 
 

Erin A. Craig

Erin A. Craig  has always loved telling stories. After getting her BFA in Theatre Design and Production from the University of Michigan, she stage-managed tragic operas filled with hunchbacks, séances, and murderous clowns, then decided she wanted to write books that were just as spooky. An avid reader, an embroidery enthusiast, a rabid basketball fan, and a collector of typewriters, Erin makes her home in West Michigan with her husband and daughter. Her debut novel, House of Salt and Sorrows, has sold over 125,000 copies since it burst onto the scene in 2019. She is also the author of Small Favors, an instant New York Times bestseller.

www.erinacraig.com

A modern masterpiece, this is a classic Gothic thriller-fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Erin A. Craig, about doomed love, menacing ambition, and the ghosts that haunt us forever.

 

Mark Crilley

Mark Crilley is the author and illustrator of more than forty books, including several acclaimed graphic novels, for which he has received fourteen Eisner Award nominations. His work has been featured in USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and on CNN Headline News. His popular YouTube videos have been viewed more than 400 million times. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Miki, and children, Matthew and Mio.

www.markcrilley.com

In this exciting graphic novel about stepping out of your comfort zone, a traveler finds himself lost in Taiwan with no way of finding his brother—but he soon learns that this forced disconnect is helping him explore and experience the big wide world around him.

 

Andrea L. Rogers

Andrea L. Rogers is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the 2023 Walter Dean Myers Award winner for her short story collection, Man Made Monsters. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her stories have appeared in several literary journals. In 2020, Capstone published Mary and the Trail of Tears. Her work has also appeared in You Too? 25 Voices Share Their #METoo Stories from Inkyard Press, Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids from Heartdrum, and in the anthology Allies by DK. Her picture book, When We Gather, is forthcoming from Heartdrum.

Photo Credit: Hiba Tahir

www.andrealrogers.com

Making her YA debut, Cherokee writer Andrea L. Rogers takes her place as one of the most striking voices of the horror renaissance that has swept the last decade. Horror fans will get their thrills in this collection – from werewolves to vampires to zombies – all the time-worn horror baddies are there. But so are predators of a distinctly American variety – the horrors of empire, of intimate partner violence, of dispossession. And so too the monsters of Rogers’ imagination, that draw upon long-told Cherokee stories – of Deer Woman, fantastical sea creatures, and more.

 

Vesper Stamper

Born in Germany and raised in New York City, Vesper Stamper writes and illustrates novels which tell, through both words and pictures, stories of history’s rhymes. Her debut illustrated YA novel, What the Night Sings, about the aftermath of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young musician, was a National Book Award Nominee, a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Morris Award Finalist, Golden Kite Honor Book and Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner, and was named one of the Best YA Books of 2018/9 by YALSA, the Wall Street Journal and Kirkus. Vesper has a BFA in Illustration from Parsons and an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from School of Visual Arts and is the host of the podcast Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself, which aims to cultivate a rehumanized worldview through artistic thinking. She lives with her husband, filmmaker Ben Stamper, and her two teenagers, in the Northeast, and teaches illustration at School of Visual Arts.

www.vesperillustration.com

A riveting story about the rivalry between two brothers living on opposite sides of the Berlin wall during its construction in the 1960s, and how their complicated legacy and dreams of greatness will determine their ultimate fate.

 

Francisco X. Stork

Francisco X. Stork (he/him) emigrated from Mexico at the age of nine with his mother and his adoptive father. I Am Not Alone is his tenth novel. Other novels include: Marcelo in the Real World, recipient of the Schneider Family Book Award; The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, which received the Elizabeth Walden Award; The Memory of Light, recipient of the Tomás Rivera Award; Disappeared, which received the Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and was a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor Book; and Illegal, recipient of the In the Margins Award, the Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Latino Book Award. On the Hook published in 2021, received four starred reviews and was the recipient of the International Latino Book Award.

www.franciscostork.com

This is a page-turning thriller and a sensitive story about mental health, love, and community that will appeal to anyone who has struggled with their place in the world, from award-winning author Francisco X. Stork.