Rene Colato Lainez

René Colato Laínez is the Salvadoran award winning author of I Am René, the Boy/ Soy René, el niño, Waiting for Papá/ Esperando a Papá, and Playing Lotería/ El juego de la lotería. His picture books have been honored by the Latino Book Award, the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, the California Collection for Elementary Readers, the Tejas Star Book Award Selection and the New Mexico Book Award. He was named “Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)” by latinostories.com. René is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults.

His goal as a writer is to produce good multicultural children's literature; stories where minority children are portrayed in a positive way, where they can see thems

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Angie Cruz

Angie Cruz was conceived in Dominican Republic and born in 1972 in New York City's Washington Heights. She continued to travel to and from, every summer, until she was sixteen years old. She went to La Guardia High School concentrating on Visual Arts and by default decided to follow a path in Fashion Design at Fashion Institute of Technology. During those four years of college, she worked as a salesperson, manager and then window designer in an upscale Madison Ave. boutique. In 1993, four of her children stories were featured on BET's Story Porch. Soon after, she gave up her fashionista lifestyle to become a full-time college student at SUNY Binghamton where her love affair with literature and history began. She graduated from the NYU, MFA
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Gennifer Choldenko

There’s a Lego in my bum which fits with the Lego in my chair and when I sit down to write, I hear the satisfying snap of the two pieces fitting together. I love words, dictionaries, thesauruses, sharp pencils, the smell of book ink and the delicious art of carving out sentences on clean white paper. I love to slip into another person’s skin and feel what it’s like to live another life. I love when characters come to me out of nowhere and make me cry so hard my mascara runs or laugh until my stomach hurts. I love the crazy fun and infinite possibility of storytelling.

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Sherri Winston

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