We spotlight the authors of six of the season’s most promising children’s and YA debuts.
Camille Gomera-Tavarez
The inspirations for Camille Gomera-Tavarez’s widely praised debut collection High Spirits: Short Stories on Dominican Diaspora—her far-flung family and its lore, her interest in the art of bookmaking, her admiration for favorite authors’ work—were always on the edge of her mind; she just didn’t know it until she got to college.
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Carl Joe Williams
According to debut children’s book illustrator Carl Joe Williams (Mardi Gras Almost Didn’t Come This Year by Kathy Z. Price), art has been part of his life from the beginning.
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Julian Randall
Twenty years in the making, Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa marks Julian Randall’s middle grade debut with the first in a series that meshes historical elements of the 1950s Trujillo dictatorship with Dominican mythology.
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Andrew Joseph White
Andrew Joseph White has been writing since before he could write; that passion blossomed into a goal to finish a full-length book at an early age, finally leading to the release of his debut novel, Hell Followed with Us, this month.
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Chioma Ebinama
The last year has been filled with milestones for Nigerian American illustrator and fine artist Chioma Ebinama, who made her debut as a picture book illustrator, providing lush nature-filled watercolors for Emile and the Field.
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