Exploring Borders and Belonging in Young Adult Literature

Alexis Wright is a Curriculum Developer at Facing History and Ourselves. Her work fosters student and teacher agency, equitable and inclusive classrooms, and community empowerment through storytelling. Alexis has over 15 years of experience working in a variety of school contexts, and she understands that students thrive when the curriculum affirms their lived experience and expands their perspective. Alexis holds an Ed.M. from Mills College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco, and her essays have been published in The Common and Black Lawrence Press.

Malaka Gharib is the author of I Was Their American Dream, winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award, and It Won't Always Be Like This. By day, she works as an editor at NPR. Her comics and writing have been published in NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Catapult, The Seventh Wave Magazine, The Nib, Saveur Magazine, The Believer Magazine and The New Yorker. She has been profiled in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Randy Ribay was born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest. He's the author of An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes, After the Shot Drops, and Patron Saints of Nothing, a powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder. It was selected as a 2019 Freeman Book Award winner and as a finalist for the National Book Award, LA Times Book Prize, Edgar Award for YA, International Thriller Writers YA Award, Amelia Walden Award, CILIP Carnegie Medal, and 17 state awards. Randy earned his BA in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Master's Degree in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education.