HERITAGE AND HISTORY IN YA

11:00 am - 11:45 am
| Location of Session: Copper Kitchen
Young Adult (YA) Sessions

Start of Signing: 12:00 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

Shane possesses an extraordinary ability—inherited from her four-great-grandmother—to summon dead creatures. Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger is a rich depiction of cultural identity and endurance despite various tragedies, including climate displacement. The Prince and the Coyote by David Bowles follows Nezahualcoyotl (of contemporary 100-peso bill fame) in a historical epic of romance, war, and politics. Join these powerhouse YA writers for a discussion about history and culture, grief and displacement, and queer representation in young adult fiction.

Introduced by Alisha Arora

About the Authors

Photo Credit: Loba

David Bowles

David Bowles is an award-winning Mexican American author and translator from Texas. His books include The Smoking Mirror, Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky, They Call Me Güero, and They Call Her Fregona. He has been published in The New York Times, School Library Journal, Strange Horizons, English Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. In 2017, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, and in 2020, he co-founded #DignidadLiteraria, a social justice movement advocating for greater Latinx representation in publishing. His latest books are The Prince & the Coyote and Secret of the Moon Conch, co-authored with Guadalupe García McCall.

Photo Credit: Bekah M Photography

Darcie Little Badger

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 a 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 and splits time between California and Texas. Her latest book is Sheine Lende.

Moderator

Yanira Cruz

Yanira Cruz is a San Antonio native, and currently serves as the Electronic Resources Librarian at her alma mater Our Lady of the Lake University. She has worked in a variety of libraries, such as public, school, and academic in her 20+ years of librarianship. Her greatest joy is working with learners and teaching them information literacy and a love of books!