Major Speakers
Friday Morning with Brendan Kiely
Brendan Kiely is the New York Times bestselling author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), Tradition, The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His most recent book is The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. His work has been published in over a dozen languages, and has received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Award, and ALA’s Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. A former high school teacher, he is now on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program.
Friday Luncheon with Desírée Zamorano
Los Angeles native Désirée Zamorano is the author of the groundbreaking, historical fiction novel Dispossessed and the highly acclaimed literary novel, The Amado Women. An award-winning writer, her work is an exploration of where cultures collide and connect. The University of Nevada is publishing Amarisa’s Cooking Pot: Tales of Life and All Its Wonders, a collection of her stories this year, while a selection of her work can be found in Alta, The Kenyon Review Online and Akashic’s South Central Noir. An avid reader, cook and traveler, she also teaches Linguistic and Cultural Diversity at CSU Long Beach.
Friday Dinner with Heather Macías, Ph.D. & Christian A. Bracho
Heather Macías, Ph.D., (she/they/ella) is an associate professor in Teacher Education in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Her work includes coordinating the Dual Language Development Master’s program, supervising secondary student teachers, and instructing various courses in the Single Subject Credential Program. Heather collaborates on several funded National Science Foundation grants. She is a recipient of the CSULB Early Academic Career Excellence Award and La Academia Liderazgo Fellowship from the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. Heather’s research interests include drag pedagogy, culturally affirming teaching pedagogies, and secondary ethnic studies teachers.
Dr. Christian A. Bracho is an assistant professor in the Teacher Education Department in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach, where he is program coordinator of the Master of Arts in Curriculum & Instruction program. He received his master’s degree and teaching credential at the University of Rochester, worked as an English teacher and teacher trainer in Los Angeles County for 12 years, and completed his Ph.D. in International Education at New York University. He served as guest editor of a special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies of Education, focused on drag and drag pedagogies.
Saturday Morning with Dr. Bettina Love
Dr. Bettina L. Love holds the esteemed William F. Russell Professorship at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. This groundbreaking work garnered the prestigious Stowe Prize for Literary Activism and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award. Recognized by the Kennedy Center in 2022 as one of the Next 50 Leaders dedicated to fostering inspiration, inclusivity, and compassion, Dr. Love’s impact extends far beyond academia. In 2024, she received the Truth Award for Excellence in Education from Better Brothers Los Angeles and The Diva Foundation.
Dr. Love actively contributes to the mission of nurturing and empowering educators and parents committed to combating injustice within their educational institutions and communities. Additionally, Dr. Love played a pivotal role as a founding member of the Task Force behind the groundbreaking program “In Her Hands,” a significant guaranteed income pilot initiative disbursing more than $13 million to support Black women in Georgia.
Renowned as a highly sought-after public speaker, Dr. Love covers a wide range of compelling topics in her engagements, including abolitionist teaching, anti-racism, Hip Hop education, Black girlhood, queer youth, educational reparations, and the use of art-based education to foster youth civic engagement. Her profound insights and expertise have earned her recognition in various news outlets, including NPR, PBS, The Daily Beast, Time, Education Week, The Guardian, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2018, the Georgia House of Representatives honored Dr. Love with a resolution for her impactful contributions to the field of education. Her bestseller We Want To Do More Than Survive has sold close to 200,000 copies and has become a staple in classrooms around the country. She is a leading voice in the field of education.
Saturday CYRM Luncheon with Ruta Sepetys
Ruta Sepetys (Rūta Šepetys) is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction published in over sixty countries and forty languages. Sepetys is published in the U.S. by Penguin Random House and is considered a “crossover” novelist as her books are read by both students and adults worldwide. Winner of the Carnegie Medal, Ruta is acclaimed for giving voice to underrepresented history and those who experienced it. Her books have won or been shortlisted for over forty book prizes, are included on over thirty state reading lists, and are currently in development for film and television. Her first novel, which chronicles the Soviet atrocities in Lithuania, has been adapted into the renowned major motion picture, Ashes in the Snow.
Ruta is the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. Born in Michigan, she was raised in a family of artists, readers, and music lovers. Ruta is passionate about the power of history and story to foster global dialogue and connectivity. She has been invited to present at NATO, European Parliament, the U.S. Capitol, the Library of Congress, and Embassies worldwide. She was awarded The Rockefeller Foundation’s prestigious Bellagio Fellowship for her studies on human resilience.
Ruta was recently bestowed the Cross of the Knight of the Order by the President of Lithuania for her contributions to education and memory preservation and was honored with a postage stamp containing her image. She is intensely proud to be Lithuanian, even if that means she has a name no one can pronounce.
Ruta lives with her family in the hills of Tennessee.
Photo credit: Rachel Kinney Studios
Saturday Night Banquet with Shonda Buchanan
Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is a three-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Oxfam Ambassador and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and Mentor. Associate Professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and teaches in Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda has authored three collections of poetry, including The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, and the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” An English Language Specialist with the Department of State, Shonda writes about Black and Indigenous narratives and is currently writing a Black Lives Matter book of poetry, America’s Bloodflowers.
Saturday Poetry Jam with Shonda Buchanan, Matthew Cuban Hernandez & Jessica M. Wilson, MFA
Matthew ‘Cuban’ Hernandez is a poet, emcee, speaker, actor, and performance coach from Jacksonville, Florida. He has toured as far as Abu Dhabi and nearly every major city in the United States and Europe, performing, teaching and coaching poetry. A teaching artist for over 15 years, Matthew has spent the last ten years working in youth detention centers across Los Angeles County, currently serving as the Director of Camp Programming for Street Poets, Inc. In addition, he is a current Lead Teacher and Co-Founder of Spoken Literature Art Movement. Cuban has opened for artists such as Wu-Tang, performed for platforms such as BuzzFeed and NPR and even appeared on the award-winning television show, Better Things. For the last two summers Matthew lead an arts and culture delegation to perform, teach and speak in Havana Cuba. Matthew is also a three time Southern Fried poetry slam champion and an award-winning poetry coach. Leading both Da Poetry Lounge Adult team and Get Lit Words Ignite youth team to multiple finals appearances at National and International Poetry competitions. Cuban’s favorite activity is making people feel great; sometimes he does this through hip hop, poetry and healing circles.
Jessica M. Wilson Cárdenas, an International Chicana Poet, born in East Los Angeles, CA. She is a 3rd generation Beatnik, with a BA and MFA in Writing (UCR and Otis) In 2009 she founded the Los Angeles Poet Society and began a network of literary events and open mics in LA County! She’s a California Poets in the Schools Poet Teacher, where she taught Youth US Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. Jessica is an Artivist, a social justice Publisher for Los Angeles Poet Society Press, amplifying QTBIPOC voices. She’s a DJ for Radio Ollin, (www.radioollin.org) Her books of poetry include: What Breathes, Raw Kit, Marie Morrison, Serious Longing, published by Swan World Press in Paris, France. She is a mother of two and lover of 1.
