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You may know her as The Tutu Teacher, a book influencer whose smile is as radiant as her book spotlights. Or maybe you’ve seen her viral video that has racked up more than 190,000 views on YouTube and been watched by millions, Let’s Talk About Race. Vera Ahiyya celebrates reading and spreads understanding with her [ Read the full article… ]
J. Dillard (known as the “Barberpreneur”) is a former managing partner for ConAllegiance, a consulting firm based out of Atlanta, Georgia. He is a master barber, a certified consultant, and an industry leader who started cutting his own hair at the age of ten. After many trials and tribulations, he began cutting hair professionally in [ Read the full article… ]
“Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower, steel, stitch, and cloud and clout, and drumbeats in the air.” – Gwendolyn Brooks “I am…a children’s book author who aspires to be a griot.” – Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow These quotes reveal much about today’s honoree, her motivation as an author, and the soulful, healing [ Read the full article… ]
Nicole D. Collier, Ph.D., was born and raised just south of Atlanta, Georgia. After a short stint in journalism, she has spent the past two decades in education. First as an elementary school teacher, and now as a partner in an executive training, coaching and consulting firm. Nicole writes for all ages, but her first [ Read the full article… ]
Brittany J. Thurman has storytelling in her soul. “I have always had an affinity for stories told by my grandmother,” she says. “Those same stories hold space in my writing today. My love of writing comes from my love of reading. As a kid, I could not get enough of going to bookstores and libraries.” [ Read the full article… ]
Debut young adult author Michelle Coles fought for civil rights as an attorney before expanding her mission to include writing history stories for teens that filled them with purpose and pride. Listed as one of the John & Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation’s Good Troublemakers, she says on that site: “It is my responsibility to bring [ Read the full article… ]
Years ago, when we first started the 28 Days Later initiative, I gladly took on the task of covering the illustrators. I worried though. At that time, there were only a handful of working Black illustrators in the field—about enough to count on ten fingers and a few toes. For that reason, I limited the [ Read the full article… ]
An accomplished middle-grade author with young adult and picture book projects on the way, Lakita Wilson is a name to watch. On her journey to being published, she received SCBWI’s Emerging Voices Award and earned a MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Today, she looks for new [ Read the full article… ]