Breaking Patterns in Literature for Children and Young Adults

The urgency in education to engage readers at all levels and foster empathy and empowerment in our future citizens and leaders calls for a discussion about the importance of using diverse literature in our classrooms and  providing diverse books in our libraries. Join these four Southern California, own voices authors as they discuss breaking patterns through literature by telling stories from their own neighborhoods.

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Featuring

Dr. Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (Moderator)

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD from the University of Southern California. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival. Her flash fiction has been included in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her debut young adult novel, Breaking Pattern, is forthcoming with Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. You can read her other stories and essays at tishareichle.com.

Ryane Nicole Granados

Ryane Nicole Granados holds an MFA from Antioch University. She is a Los Angeles native whose writing finds its roots in her love of community and her belief that Black motherhood is an act of social justice. Named the 2021 California Arts Council Established Writer Individual Arts Fellow, her work has been featured in various publications including Pangyrus, The Manifest-Station, The Nervous Breakdown, The Atticus Review, and LA Parent Magazine. Her storytelling has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and showcased in KPCC’s series Unheard LA. As the winner of the 2023 Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize, her novella, The Aves, will be published in 2024.

Livia Blackburne

New York Times bestselling author Livia Blackburne wrote her first novel while researching the neuroscience of reading at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Since then, she’s switched to full-time writing, which also involves getting into people’s heads but without the help of a three tesla MRI scanner.  Her books include Midnight Thief, Rosemarked, Feather and Flame, and Clementine and Danny Save the World (And Each Other), as well as the picture book I Dream of Popo, which received three starred reviews and was on numerous Best of Year lists. She is Chinese American and lives in southern California with her husband and daughter.

Isabel Quintero

Isabel Quintero is an award-winning writer, including NPR’s yearly Book Concierge List, NYPL’s best of list, and the New York Times Best Books list. When she’s not writing she enjoys hiking, laughing, and cooking.-winning writer and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She proudly lives and writes in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Isabel has authored: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces (Cinco Puntos Press), her first YA novel, the chapter books, Ugly Cat and Pablo (Scholastic, Inc.) and Ugly Cat and Pablo and the Missing Brother (Scholastic, Inc.), the graphic novel Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide, illustrated by Zeke Peña (Getty Publications), and the picture books My Papi Has a Motorcycle, also illustrated by Zeke Peña (Kokila), and Mama’s Panza, illustrated by Iliana Galvez.