T216.
Activist Movements in Historical Young Adult Novels and Youth Activism Today
Thursday, March 9, 2023
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
What lessons and hope can we take away from fictional depictions of historical youth activism? Authors of YA historical fiction discuss the youth activism of the 1989 Beijing Tiananmen Square protests, the post-WWII resistance of the Polish and Ukrainian people, and the resistance of Czech teens to the Soviet occupation during the cold war. They also discuss how these stories about youth-led resistance can inspire today's political protests.
Participants
Diana Ma is a Chinese American author of the Daughters of the Dynasty series. Her debut novel was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in YA. She is a 2019 We Need Diverse Books mentee and has an MA in creative writing from UIC and is English faculty at North Seattle College.
Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the YA novels Gringolandia, Rogue, and Torch and the coauthor (with Zetta Elliott) of the MG verse novel Moowalking. She translates picture books and graphic novels from Portuguese to English. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from VCFA.
Katia Raina
