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Wini Ashooh is a youth services/teen specialist librarian at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library System in Virginia. She provides library services to the teen residents at the Rappahannock Juvenile Center (RJC) in Stafford, Virginia. The RJC is an 80-bed facility that provides secure incarceration for court-ordered youth, crisis intervention, substance abuse and counseling services.

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Edith Campbell is an assistant librarian in the Cunningham Memorial Library at Indiana State University. As part of the Reference and Instruction team, she serves as the liaison to the Bayh College of Education. Edith was elected to the 2018 YALSA Printz Award Committee and has been appointed the ALSC Sibert Committee from 2019-21. She is on the advisory board for the online peer-reviewed journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature. Her research interests include the visibility of Black girls in young adult literature and implementing mind and brain research in library practices. She blogs to promote literacy, decolonization and social justice in young adult literature at CrazyQuiltsEdi. Edith received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Cincinnati and M.L.S. from Indiana University.

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Vanessa “Chacha” Centeno is a youth services librarian with the Sacramento Public Library. She is best known for her work with immigrant and refugee families, advocacy for at-risk youth and diversity representation in libraries. Before her career as a librarian, Vanessa worked with chronic homeless populations and interned with her local Juvenile Probation Department while completing a Baccalaureate Degree in criminology & criminal justice. She has brought services to at-risk communities through partnerships with groups serving youth in special education, and by advocating for change in policy and service to foster and group home youth. Vanessa was raised amongst family with diverse Chicano and American Indian backgrounds and credits her grandmothers for teaching resilience and nurturing her love for younger generations. She enjoys storytelling and believes it teaches and preserves culture while healing the wounds of generational trauma. She is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

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Anna Cvitkovic is a Teen Librarian with the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL). She runs the library at Log Cabin Ranch, a detention facility for teenage boys within the Juvenile Probation Department, where youth have discovered an unlikely passion for knitting. She also leads library outreach programming for youth experiencing parenting, homelessness and other challenges, and has developed the first SFPL program specifically for transitional-aged youth (TAY). In her spare time, Anna loves roller-skating, nail art and reading in the sun, and is a terrible but enthusiastic gardener.

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Allyson Dowds is the Youth Technology Librarian for Teen Central at the Boston Public Library. In this role, Allyson coordinates efforts to bridge the technology gap among urban youth by working with and for youth to identify community partners as well as design and implement a STEAM-based curriculum within and beyond the walls of the library. Prior to this work, Allyson served as a Library Manager in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, working with both incarcerated men and woman since 2009. During her tenure, she established several humanities programs for inmates, including the first Art Group, a family literacy program in conjunction with a local public library, as well as a Poetry Group that was co-convened with a Pushcart Prize winning local poet. Also, she facilitated a regular reading and discussion program called ABLE MINDS (Altering Behaviors through Literary Exploration and Moderated Inquiry-based Discussion Sessions). Ally holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Loyola University of Chicago, and an MLIS from Simmons College.

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Nicholas Higgins is the Director of Outreach Services at the Brooklyn Public Library, where he directs a unique suite of services including the Services for Older Adults department, Correctional Services, Immigrant Services, and outreach to individuals and families experiencing homelessness. From 2009 to 2013, he oversaw The New York Public Library’s Correctional Services department, developing several new programs including a New York veterans oral history project, an early literacy and book recording program for incarcerated parents, and Library School, a 12 week literature class offered for men in federal prison. In 2012, he was named Deputy Director of Outreach Services for NYPL, a position created to expand services to older adults, veterans and individuals with disabilities. Nick began his career in 2006 at the Brooklyn Public Library, delivering targeted library services to children with disabilities, war veterans, job seekers and formerly incarcerated Brooklynites while serving as librarian and Acting Manager of Volunteer Resources. He received an MLS from the Pratt Institute and a B.A. in British Literature from Hunter College.

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Nosheen Hydari, LMFT, is a Psychotherapist at Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4), Cook County Jail Mental Health Transition Center, and Northside Center for Relationship Counseling. In her role at C4, Nosheen has provided crisis services to hundreds of children and adults in severe psychiatric distress, many who are victims of trauma and experiencing suicidal thoughts/behaviors and self-harm. At Cook County Jail, she provides therapy to inmates with the goal of reducing recidivism often caused by a lack of resources and safe alternatives for individuals who entered into the correctional system and have not been able to transition out. In her role as a Private Practice Psychotherapist at Northside Center for Relationship Counseling, Nosheen utilizes her bicultural upbringing as a first-generation South Asian American immigrant in helping clients overcome constraints in their relationships. Nosheen trained in Systemic Therapy at Northwestern University's The Family Institute. In 2014, she was selected by The White House as a Champion of Change under President Obama's program honoring individuals working at the community level on gun violence prevention.

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Susana M. Morris is an Associate Professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and co-founder of the popular feminist blog, The Crunk Feminist Collective. Susana is the author of Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women’s Literature (UVA Press 2014) and co-editor, with Brittney C. Cooper and Robin M. Boylorn, of the anthology, The Crunk Feminist Collection (Feminist Press 2017). Susana is also series editor, along with Kinitra D. Brooks, of the book series New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative, published at The Ohio State University Press. Currently, she is a Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center Fellow at Georgia Tech working on her latest book project, Electric Ladies: Black Women, Afrofuturism, and Feminism.

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Laura Rogers is Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. She teaches a wide range of courses, including Contemporary American Literature, American Women Writers, Crime and Punishment, and Fiction and Film. Her research interests are writing center theory and practice, critical literacy, 19th-century American women writers, feminist film theory and prison literacies and pedagogies. In partnership with the onsite library, Laura served as the local scholar for several Great Stories Club programs at the Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, New York. She has been engaged in correctional facility literacy education since 1984. Laura holds a Doctor of Arts in English from the State University of New York at Albany.

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Michael R. Wenger is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Sociology at The George Washington University, where he teaches classes on race relations and institutional racism. He also serves as a senior consultant on race relations with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In this capacity, he provides guidance on the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation effort of the Foundation and has facilitated racial healing circles at the conferences of several large organizations, including Independent Sector, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the 91��ý, and Virginia’s Commonwealth Commission on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. He was recently named as a senior fellow at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U).

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Andrew Aydin is creator and co-author of the #1 New York Times best-selling graphic memoir series March, which chronicles the life of congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. Co-authored with Rep. Lewis and illustrated by Nate Powell, March is the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award, and is a recipient of the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for "Best Reality-Based Work", the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition and the Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor. The Washington Post heralded the completion of the March trilogy, saying, "The closest American peer to Maus has arrived."

An Atlanta native, Andrew was raised by a single mother and grew up reading and collecting comic books. After college, he took a job with Congressman Lewis where Andrew learned that the civil rights legend had been inspired as a young man by a classic 1950s comic book, Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. They discussed the impact that comic books can have on young readers and decided to write a graphic novel together about the civil rights era. Collaborating with artist Nate Powell, the March trilogy was born in 2013.

Today, Andrew serves as Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford and Georgetown University in Washington, Andrew wrote his master’s thesis on the history and impact of Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. His best-selling graphic novels March: Book One, March: Book Two, and March: Book Three are taught in middle schools, high schools and colleges across the country. Andrew lectures at schools and universities, participates in reading programs with incarcerated youth, serves as a national project advisor to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the Great Stories Club (GSC): Reading and Discussion for At-Risk Youth, has taught classes on script writing at the Smithsonian, and has appeared as a guest on the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, NPR, CNN, the BBC and many other outlets.

Andrew's other works include the 2016 X-Files Annual (IDW), the 2016 CBLDF Annual Liberty (Image), and an upcoming issue of Bitch Planet (Image), as well as articles for the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance Magazine.

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Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is Co-Chair and Associate Professor in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan’s School of Education. A notable expert on diversity in children's and young adult literature, she is the award-winning author of The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. Her most recent books are Harry Potter and the Other: Race, Justice, and Difference in the Wizarding World, co-edited with Sarah Park Dahlen, and Re-story-ing Young Adult Literature: Expanding Students' Perspectives with Digital Texts, co-authored with James Joshua Coleman and Autumn A. Griffin.

Great Stories Club theme:
IMAGINING TOMORROW: BUILDING INCLUSIVE FUTURES

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Emily Mazzoni is a Young Adult Librarian at Monroe Township Public Library. Emily Mazzoni is approaching her tenth year as a teen librarian, and still thinks it’s the best job in the library! She’s the solo (and first!) teen librarian for Monroe Township Public Library in central New Jersey, and is also currently serving as the President of the New Jersey Library Association’s Young Adult Services Section. Her favorite genres are sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

Great Stories Club theme:

IMAGINING TOMORROW: BUILDING INCLUSIVE FUTURES