CURATOR

Hi! I’m a fiction writer and book lover from Trinidad and Tobago. I have spent over ten years talking about the importance of diversity in literature through writing workshops, literary panels, and gatherings like this one, all around the world.

At Brown Girl Book Lover we research, interview and celebrate diverse writers in the literary sphere. In the process, we’re also unearthing books and their authors that have been overlooked for too long. Their stories become a portal to a whole new world, ripe with the manna of the imagination! Photo c/o Cliff Faust

KIDDE POOL HOST

Phat is an All-american boy born in Vietnam. He and his family braved a clandestine journey from their wartorn home country to settle in Southern California. He works with technology, e-commerce and nonprofit organizations to help them tell their stories. Phat spent years as a senior editor at Yahoo, and got his start in journalism as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine and a BA in English Lit. from UC Irvine.

WRITER

Mary McLaughlin Slechta is the 2021 recipient of the Kimbilio National Fiction Prize. Her winning collection, Mulberry Street Stories, was then published by Four Way Books in 2023. Previously, she had published a poetry collection, Wreckage on a Watery Moon (FootHills), and two illustrated chapbooks with artist Rita Kelley (Feral Press). She is an editor for great weather for MEDIA and lives in Syracuse, New York with her family.

WRITER

Dana Jaye Cadman is a writer and artist. Her work appears in North American Review, Third Coast Magazine, Vassar Review, Southeast Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, New England Review, The Glacier Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Newark and is an Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Pace University - Pleasantville.

WRITER

Avery Irons was born and raised in central Illinois. She is a writing consultant based in Albany, New York. Her novella Glass Men won Big Fiction Magazine’s Novella Prize in 2016. Her short fiction has appeared in the African American Review, Ragazine.cc, and Sinister Wisdom. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

WRITER

Nancy Burke teaches college writing at Montclair State University and NJIT. She earned her MFA in fiction (with a concentration in dramatic writing) after raising three daughters. Her sci fi novel Only the Women are Burning is currently being adapted for the screen, and her new story collection, Death Cleaning and Other Units of Measure, was released by Apprentice House this year.