Former teacher Laura Purdie Salas believes reading small picture books and poems can have a huge impact on your life. She has written more than 130 books for kids, including Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons (Kirkus Best Books and Parents Magazine Best Books of the Year), the Can Be… series (Bank Street Best Books, IRA Teachers’ Choice), and Bookspeak!: Poems About Books (Minnesota Book Award, NCTE Notable). Laura shares inspiration and practical tips with educators about poetry, nonfiction, and more.
Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times Bestselling author of YA novels including the Coretta Scott King— John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning Monday’s Not Coming, the NAACP Image Award-nominated Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, and her latest titles Blackout, White Smoke, and Santa in the City.
K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She wrote and illustrated A Normal Pig and her latest book is All Eyes on Ozzy!
Carmen Oliver grew up in Manitoba, Canada, surrounded by lakes and prairie grass where she built tree forts, caught tadpoles, and sailed on homemade rafts. She is the author of the picture book series Bears Make the Best Buddies (Reading, Math, Writing, and Science) as well as the nonfiction picture book biography A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal, a Junior Library Guild spring 2019 pick.
Varian Johnson is the author of several novels for children and young adults, including The Parker Inheritance, which won both Coretta Scott King Author Honor and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awards; The Great Greene Heist, an ALA Notable Children’s book and Kirkus Reviews Best Book; and the graphic novel Twins, illustrated by Shannon Wright, an NPR Best Book.
Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with Kwame Mbalia, editor of Black Boy Joy, two additional contributors Varian Johnson and Julian Randall, and Washington, DC area teacher, Cosby Hunt.
Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with New York Times Best Selling author and illustrator Rachel Ignotofsky. Rachel will be interviewed by Soñia Galaviz a 5th-grade teacher and leader with the Boise State Writing Project.
Abdi Nor Iftin has been featured on various radio and TV stations sharing his life story of growing up in a country torn by civial war and immigrating to the United States in 2014. His new book Call Me American was released in 2018 and is a finalist for New England’s Bookseller’s Association book awards.
In this CoLab, co-author/editor Christopher R. Rogers will be joined by members of the Marginal Syllabus team for a conversation that starts with the editor’s introduction to the February 2021 edition of the journal Research in the Teaching of English.