Stephanie Seales is the California-born daughter of Panamanian immigrants and the author of the Caldecott Honor and CSK Illustrator Medal-winning book My Daddy Is a Cowboy, illustrated by C.G. Esperanza (Abrams, June 2024), and the upcoming Jodie Doesn’t Love Dogs (Candlewick, Spring 2027). Stephanie is a children’s literature expert who’s worked in nearly every aspect of the book industry. She’s passionate about community, connection, and equity and understands the power of story. She follows Toni Morrison’s advice writing the books she wants to read. She dreams and creates with her magical canine companion, Pan, near the water in the Hudson Valley, New York.
The Journey & My Path to Publishing
My path was nontraditional. I’ve been a part of the children’s book industry for many years and I have a Master’s degree in children’s literature, so I was coming from within the industry so to speak. Despite that and I think also because of it, I didn’t actively pursue my dream of becoming a published author for many years. It didn’t feel attainable to me, in part because I was very aware of the many roadblocks that keep people from marginalized communities from being published, and when they are published, from being successful. Knowing this about the industry made it harder for me to believe that I could get published. So, I kept my dream – and even the fact that I’m a writer – very close and didn’t share much. Eventually I realized that while this modus operandi kept me safe, it wasn’t getting me closer to realizing my dream. If I wanted to have a chance at my dream coming true, I had to take a risk. So, I started with what was within my control: sharing my writing. I gathered my courage and shared my writing (which was a big step for me!) with a friend who was also an agent. From there things moved pretty quickly: I signed with her and she submitted the COWBOY manuscript. Then my editor, Courtney Code at Abrams, made an offer on the book (within a month of receiving it, which is very quick!), and the rest is history! So, if anyone reading this is in a similar boat, I encourage you to take a chance and make a move towards your dreams!
The Inspiration: Inspiration for COWBOY came to me in a few ways:
- Joy: I wrote COWBOY in 2020. It was a hard year worldwide, to varying degrees, and for me personally it was a time when I needed more joy in my life and wanted to see more joy in the world. I was looking for those joyful stories and I wasn’t finding as many as I wanted. So many Black stories are about the struggle and while those stories are important, I felt like there was an imbalance with too few stories centering Black Joy, which makes no sense given that we’re historically a people who can create joy even in the most dire of circumstances. So I set out to write a book that highlighted that Black Joy. You know how people say “straight, no chaser” well I say “joy, no trauma”!
- Black Urban Cowboys: a friend sent me an article about the Compton Cowboys and asked me if I’d ever thought about writing about them. Unbeknownst to her, I’d been following the Compton Cowboys on social media for years. Being from Southern California myself, I was fascinated seeing them riding around Compton, an urban area, and I loved the joy they brought to their community and the way they make horseback riding more accessible to kids in their city. Then through my research I learned a lot about the history of Black cowboys in the U.S. I wanted to shine a light on that culture.
Loving Black Dads: it’s been really beautiful for me to see how dad’s of my generation (Millennials – and some older and younger dads as well!) parenting with such intention and really showing up with kindness and respect for their kids. I feel like this style of parenting is a real departure from past generations’ ideology. I was thinking about this and how it wasn’t aligning with the portrayals I was seeing in the media of dads, and Black dads in particular. So, I wanted this story to really highlight those awesome, loving dads and how beautiful it is for kids to have a dad like that.
- Panamanian Culture: Since I’ve been a part of the children’s book community for a long time, I have a pretty broad book knowledge and thus knew that there hadn’t been any traditionally published picture books that featured characters of Panamanian descent. Both of my parents are from Panama and I knew I wanted to fill that gap and highlight our culture in my books. I was really fortunate in getting to collaborate with C.G. Esperanza as he really took the cultural representation piece seriously. I wrote him a note about different Panamanian cultural clues he could include in the art. A big one was mola (which he already knew about!), a hand-stitched textile art of the Guna people, an indigenous tribe in Panama. Mola is often done on a black or red background and features an animal silhouette with various patterns in bright colors inside. It’s very special to Panamanians. I like to say that we have laser vision for mola: if there’s mola in a space, a Panamanian will see it, lol! C.G. included mola throughout the book, most noticeably in the final spread. When I first saw that spread, I burst out sobbing – it’s so beautiful and it was so meaningful to me to have the book end on that cultural note. I’m tearing up now writing about it!
THE BUZZ: Reviews and Media Links
I was really excited to be able to write an article for Essence called Cowboy Culture Has Always Been Black Culture. I’m also thrilled that My Daddy Is a Cowboy has received six starred reviews!:
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
School Library Journal Starred Review
Learn more about Stephanie on her website, Instragram and Bluesky!