Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Author Bio: Coe Booth

Coe Booth was born and raised in the Bronx of New York City. She is the author of Tyrell, Kendra, Bronxwood, and Kinda like Brothers. She currently lives in the Bronx, working as a full-time writer and a part-time writing teacher at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Booth also volunteers for the NAACP ACT-SO program where she mentors teen writers.

Author Bio: Tracey Baptiste

Tracey Baptiste was born in Trinidad, where she grew up on jumbie stories and fairy tales, and decided to be a writer at the wise old age of three. Her debut, a young-adult novel titled Angel’s Grace, was named one of the 100 best books for reading and sharing by New York City librarians. She is a former teacher, textbook editor, ballerina, and amateur librarian who once started up a library in her house. She writes and edits books for kids.

Author Bio: Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He is also the 2020–2021 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Author Bio: Rita Williams-Garcia

Rita Williams-Garcia is the author of the Newbery Honor–winning novel One Crazy Summer, which was also a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, a National Book Award finalist, and winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. She is also the author of several other novels for young adults, including Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; Every Time a Rainbow Dies, a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book; Fast Talk on a Slow Track, an ALA Best Books for Young Adults; and Like Sisters on the Homefront, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the program for writing for children and young adults.

Author Bio: Brandy Colbert

Brandy Colbert is the critically acclaimed author of the novels Pointe, The Voting Booth, Finding Yvonne, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, The Only Black Girls in Town, and the Stonewall Award winner Little & Lion. A trained journalist, she also worked with boundary-breaking ballet dancer Misty Copeland to adapt her memoir into the bestselling book Life in Motion: Young Readers Edition. She is on the faculty at Hamline University’s MFA degree program for writing for children and young adults. find her online at www.brandycolbert.com.

Author Bio: Tochi Onyebuchi

Tochi Onyebuchi is a writer based in Connecticut. He holds a MFA in Screenwriting from Tisch and a JD from Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ideomancer, among other places.

Author Bio: Coleen Booth

Author Bio: Leah Henderson

Author Bio: Jay Coles

Author Bio: Renée Watson

Renée Watson is the author of This Side of Home, which was nominated for the Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Her picture book Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills received several honors including an NAACP Image Award nomination in children’s literature. She is also the founder of the I, Too Arts Collective and currently teaches courses on writing for children at University of New Haven and Pine Manor College.