PEN Presents: Free the Books
Padma Venkatraman
Padma Venkatraman is the author of Born Behind Bars, The Bridge Home, A Time To Dance, Island’s End and Climbing the Stairs. Her work has won a Walter Dean Myers Award, Golden Kite Award, Crystal Kite Award, two Paterson Prizes, two Julia Ward Howe awards, two Nerdies, three South Asia Book Awards, ALA Notable, NYPL Best Book, and many other awards and honors. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Magazine. Before becoming an American author, Dr. Venkatraman was an oceanographer and diversity director. Visit her at www.padmavenkatraman.com to explore resources and sign up for her newsletter.
Ryan La Sala
Ryan La Sala writes about surreal things happening to queer people. He is the author behind the luminous and terrifying bestselling horror novel The Honeys, which is in development to become a major motion picture with Anonymous Content, and the highly anticipated supernatural thriller Beholder. His previous titles include Reverie and Be Dazzled, both of which made the Kids’ Indie Next List. He has been featured in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR. Ryan is the host of the infamous Bad Author Book Club podcast and a frequent speaker at events and conferences. When not writing, Ryan does arts and crafts, supervised by his cat, Haunted Little Girl.
Kasey Meehan
Kasey Meehan (Moderator) is the Freedom to Read program director at PEN America, leading their initiatives to protect students’ right to freely access literature in schools. Previously, Meehan served as the associate director of postsecondary policy at Research for Action, a mission-driven education research organization in Philadelphia. Meehan’s research centers students’, educators’, and school leaders’ experiences in identifying strategies for reform and capturing emerging best practices, and strives to connect research to policy and program change. Meehan holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MPA from the Fels Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, along with a certificate in politics.
Leatrice “Elle” McKinney
Leatrice “Elle” McKinney, writing as L. L. McKinney, was named one of The Root’s 100 most influential African Americans and one of BET’s 100 entertainers and innovators of the year. McKinney is an advocate for equality and inclusion in publishing, and the creator of the hashtags #PublishingPaidMe and #WhatWoCWritersHear. A lover of comics, anime, video games, sci-fi, and fantasy, she strives to push these mediums toward representation that better reflects the diverse world we live in. McKinney lives in Kansas City, spending her free time plagued by her two cats, Chester and Humphrey. Her works include the Nightmare-Verse books, Nubia: Real One through DC, Marvel’s Black Widow: Bad Blood, Power Rangers Unlimited: Heir to Darkness, and more.
Laurel Snyder
Laurel Snyder is the author of many picture books and eight novels for children, as well as two books of poems: Daphne & Jim: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Biography in Verse and The Myth of the Simple Machines. She also edited the nonfiction anthology Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle fellow, Snyder has published work in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Utne Reader, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Revealer, Salon, the Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere. She was an occasional commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered and currently teaches at Hamline University and Emory University. A Baltimore native, Snyder lives in Atlanta with her family.
