THE PLOT THICKENS

2:45 pm - 3:45 pm
| Location of Session: Copper Kitchen
Young Adult (YA) Sessions

Start of Signing: 4:00 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

Everyday worlds can hide murder and deep secrets. Pura Belpré-winning author Guadalupe García McCall returns with Echoes of Grace. Tragedy follows the Torres family in this Gothic mystery with echoes of Mexican folklore. New York Times bestselling Cynthia Leitich Smith (Harvest House) returns to the world of her American Indian Youth Literature Award winner Hearts Unbroken. Halloween’s coming up, and Hughie Wolfie is volunteering at a new rural attraction–until he learns that an actor playing the vengeful spirit of an “Indian maiden,” a ghost inspired by local legend, will headline at the Harvest House. In Mark Oshiro’s page-turning Into the Light, Manny is a homeless queer kid in California trying to get back to the cult he left behind to find out if his sister is the dead body that has been discovered in the woods behind the cult. These YA mysteries are about finding your place in a world full of prejudice, discrimination, and injustice. Authors will be introduced by students at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

About the Authors

Photo Credit: Michael Mercado Smith

Guadalupe García McCall

Born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and raised in Eagle Pass, Texas, Guadalupe García McCall is the award-winning author of several young adult novels, some short stories for adults, and many children’s poems. She has received the Pura Belpré Award, a Westchester Young Adult Fiction Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award, among many other accolades. Guadalupe is currently a visiting professor in the MFA Creative Writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She lives in the San Antonio area, where she is working on two novels coming soon from Bloomsbury. Her latest book of fiction is Echoes of Grace.

Photo Credit: Christopher T. Assaf

Cynthia Leitich Smith

Cynthia Leitich Smith is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of Hearts Unbroken, the Tantalize series, and the Feral trilogy. An NSK Neustadt Laureate and the author-curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books, she was named the inaugural Katherine Paterson Chair on the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. A citizen of the Muscogee Nation, Cynthia Leitich Smith lives in Austin, Texas. Her latest book is Harvest House.

Photo Credit: Darius Voncel

Mark Oshiro

Mark Oshiro is the award-winning author of the young adult books Anger is a Gift (2019 Schneider Family Book Award), and Each of Us a Desert. They have also penned two middle grade books, The Insiders, and You Only Live Once, David Bravo. They are also the co-author (with Rick Riordan) of The Sun and The Star: A Nico Di Angelo Adventure. When not writing, they are trying to pet every dog in the world. Their latest YA novel is Into the Light.

Moderator

Laura Sisson

Laura Sisson is a San Antonio area school librarian. She is a mother, runner, reader, and life long advocate for the art of story as a healing and change agent.