Take the Mic

Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of young adult novels: Love, Hate & Other Filters, Internment, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, Hollow Fires, as well as the middle grade fantasy adventure series Amira & Hamza. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies including: Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Ink Knows No Borders, Vampires Never Get Old, and A Universe of Wishes. She was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in Batavia, Illinois, in a house that smelled like fried onions, spices, and potpourri. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Samira has taught high school English in both the suburbs of Chicago and New York City, worked in education non-profits, and spent time on the road for political campaigns.

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received the Newbery Honor, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.

Keah Brown is a journalist, freelance writer, and the creator of #DisabledAndCute. She is an advocate for people with disabilities and is from Lockport, New York. Her work has appeared on Essence.com and in Teen Vogue, Catapult, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, and Lenny Letter, among other publications. The Pretty One is her debut essay collection.

L. D. Lewis is a data analyst and coffee enthusiast. She also serves as art director for FIYAH Literary Magazine for Black Speculative Fiction. She lives in Georgia under perpetual deadline.

Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied Mendez is the author of Blizzard Besties, Random Acts of Kittens, and many other books for young readers, including Furia, a Reese's YA Book Club selection and a Kirkus Reviews and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains with her husband, five kids, two dogs, and one majestic cat who rules them all. A Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she is also a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Bethany C. Morrow is author of speculative stories that run the gamut between science fiction and speculative literary fiction. Her debut novel, Mem (Unnamed Press, 2018), was an ABA Indies Introduce and Indies Next pick. Her debut YA novel is forthcoming from Tor in 2020. She is also a sensitivity reader.

Sofia Quintero is a writer, an activist, an educator, a speaker, and a comedienne. She has written several hip hop novels under the pen name Black Artemis and also writes "chica lit" under her real name. This self-proclaimed "Ivy League homegirl" graduated from Columbia University and lives in the Bronx.

Jason Reynolds is an award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Jason's many books include Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Track series, Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and Look Both Ways, which was a National Book Award Finalist. His book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is a collaboration with Ibram X. Kendi. Recently named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Jason has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and CBS This Morning. He is on faculty at Lesley University for the Writing for Young People MFA Program and lives in Washington, DC.

Laura Silverman is an author and editor currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA in writing for children at the New School. Her books include Girl Out of Water, You Asked for Perfect, It's a Whole Spiel, and Recommended for You. Girl Out of Water was a Junior Library Guild Selection.

Ray Stoeve is the author of the young adult novel Between Perfect and Real, which was a 2021 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. They also contributed to the young adult anthology Take The Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance. They received a 2016-2017 Made at Hugo House Fellowship and created the YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist, a database that tracks all books in those age categories written by trans authors about trans characters. When they're not writing, they can be found gardening, making art in other mediums, or hiking their beloved Pacific Northwest.

Connie Sun is a cartoonist and writer based in New York City. For seven years, she drew a daily webcomic strip every morning before going to her job at a university, where she ran education programs in conflict resolution. She has cartooned for the New Yorker, McSweeney's, GoComics, and Angry Asian Man.

Amir Abdullah (he/him/his) is an actor, playwright, and audiobook narrator residing in Los Angeles. He has been seen on stage at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Geffen Playhouse, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, California Shakespeare Theatre, A Noise Within Theatre, and other theaters around the US. On screen, Amir most recently appeared on Chicago Med and on the last season of Empire and has been seen on other network shows and films. As a narrator, he is a four-time Golden Earphone Award winner and an ALSC Notable Children's Recording recipient. Most known for narrating the YA series Tristan Strong, he has lent his voice to dozens of other prolific authors' works such as Ibram X. Kendi, Kwame Mbalia, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, Eric Jerome Dickey, and more. You can hear him as the voice of Yasir in the videogame Abo Kashem and in the HP Lovecraft Society Radio Plays and as a regular on the Open Door Playhouse. He can be seen and heard in commercials for Ford, Adidas, Kaiser Permanente, and Facebook, as well as many others. As an actor Amir won Best Actor at the Movieville International Film Festival for his work in the film The Untimely Concurrence. Amir's playwriting debut, Pray to Ball, had its world premiere at Skylight Theatre Company in Los Angeles and won the Ovation Award for Best Set. He graduated with an MFA in acting from Pennsylvania State University and a BFA in acting from the University of Miami.

Soneela Nankani is the award-winning narrator of over 300 titles in many different genres, including young adult, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and nonfiction. A recipient of AudioFile magazine's Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Honor, she has garnered sixteen Earphones awards as well as nominations for Audie and SOVAS awards. Her audiobooks have been featured in Best Audiobooks lists by AudioFile and the Washington Post, among others. In her spare time, she loves to read (yes, really), learn languages, try new recipes, and travel. She lives in the DC area with her husband and two mischievous daughters.

Adenrele Ojo is a native Philadelphian who currently resides in Los Angeles by way of New York. She is a wearer of many creative hats: actress, voice-over artist, writer, producer, and photographer. Adenrele is a theater baby (daughter of the late founder of The New Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, John E. Allen Jr.) who received her BA in theater from Hunter College in New York and honed her skills at the William Esper Studio, studying Meisner under the auspices of Maggie Flanigan. No stranger to the stage, a few of her theater credits include August Wilson's Jitney (NJPAC); Bronzeville (Robey Theatre Co.); Joe Turner's Come and Gone (nominated for an L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Featured Actress); and The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza, directed by Shirley Jo Finney, which won the 2010 L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award & the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. She moves from stage to screen in such feature films as Within; Family; Elevate and Bathroom Vanities, a don't-judge-a-book-by-it's-cover comedy about one woman's unforgettable experience in a ladies' bathroom, directed by Christopher Scott Cherot (Hav Plenty and G), which Adenrele starred, cowrote and produced under the umbrella of her production company, NeW YiLLy Entertainment. Ojo's voice can also be heard on many audiobooks, which she has been recording since 2007 and for which she has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Some of her works include Katie Couric's The Best Advice I Ever Got, Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill, The Mothers by Brit Bennett (AudioFile Best of 2016 Fiction), Weapons of Mass Seduction by Lori Bryant-Woolridge, Oprah's Book Club 2.0 pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, The Healing by Jonathan Odell, Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott and Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan. When she is not recording, you can sometimes find her directing authors, celebrity actors, and other audiobook narrators.

Kyla Garcia is a film, stage, and television actress based in Los Angeles, California. She has earned an Audie Award nomination and seven AudioFile Earphones Awards for her work as an audiobook narrator. Her favorite storytelling moments include being a company member of Native Voices at the Autry, starring in the World Premiere of Sovereignty at Arena Stage, and creating the critically acclaimed one-woman show The Mermaid Who Learned How to Fly. Kyla's most recent project is the original feminist spoken-word digital series Herstory 101 featured in BUST Magazine.

Sarah Beth Goer is a film and theater actress with over twenty-four years of acting experience. A member of both AEA and SAG-AFTRA, she recently produced, cowrote, and starred in her first feature film, Three Roads. As a narrator, she loves to immerse her listeners in the world of the story, bringing the text passionately and authentically to life. She has been described by one director as "possess[ing] that rarest combination of vulnerability, intelligence, and strength, allowing audiences to eagerly follow her wherever the story may lead."