Margarita Engle and Susan Tan team up at the 2017 Midwinter Meeting

For Immediate Release
Fri, 09/23/2016

Contact:

Amy McGuigan

Conference Manager

ALA Conference Services

amcguigan@ala.org

Award-winning children’s book authors Susan Tan and Margarita Engle will team up on Saturday, January 21st in the Auditorium Speakers Series at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss diversity in children's books and women authors.

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse books, including the Newbery Honor Book The Surrender Tree, the PEN USA Award-winning The Lightning Dreamer, and the Walter Dean Myers Honor Book Enchanted Air. Her books have received multiple Pura Belpré and Américas Awards as well as a Jane Addams Award, an International Reading Association Award, and many others. Her books for younger children include Mountain Dog, Summer Birds, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award winner Drum Dream Girl. In 2017 she will publish Bravo!, an illustrated collection of poems presenting famous and lesser-known Latinos who have al faced life's challenges in creative ways—from writer and teacher Fabiola Cabeza de Baca to Tito Puente and Cesar Chavez.

Debut author Susan Tan grew up in a mixed-race family, and like Cilla, the heroine of her enthusiastically received new novel, was bald until the age of five. Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire is a middle-grade novel about a biracial Asian American girl who dreams of becoming a famous, bestselling author, but first has to deal with the arrival of a new sibling and the differences between the two sides of her family. Tan studied children's literature at the University of Cambridge and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Engle and Tan’s appearance at the Midwinter Meeting is sponsored by Macmillan Children’s Group.

2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits: The conversation starts here . . .

Early bird registration—offering the best rates—is open until noon (Central) November 9. Advance registration is then open through noon (Central) Jan 13, 2017. Annual Conference registration and housing open noon (Central), February 2, 2017.

Stay in touch and get updates: 2017 Midwinter Meeting website, Twitter (@alamw and #alamw17), Facebook Event, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram (#alamw17). Use these resources to make your case for attending.