SPEAKER BIOS
Prof Kimberley Reynolds
Kimberley Reynolds is the Professor of Children’s Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University in the UK. In 2013 she received the International Brothers Grimm Award for her contributions to the field of children’s literature research. She conceived and was the first Director of the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature and was involved in founding the UK’s Children’s Laureate and setting up Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books. She is a Past President and Honorary Fellow of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature and was the first Senior Honorary Fellow of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia. Currently she recently finished a stint as Senior Editor of International Research in Children’s Literature and she is on the scientific board of the Centre for Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, University of Wroclaw. Recent book-length publications include Reading and Rebellion: an anthology of radical writing for children, 1900-1960 (co-edited with Jane Rosen and Michael Rosen, 2018); Left Out: The Forgotten Tradition of Radical Publishing for Children in Britain, 1910-1949 (2016), and Children’s Literature in the Oxford University series of Very Short Introductions (2012).
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/staff/profile/kimreynolds.html#background
Dr Leah Phillips
Dr Phillips is an early career researcher in the field of YA studies. She is the founder and current President of the YA Studies Association, an international organisation focusing on the research, teaching and practice of YA. Dr Phillips is also currently revising Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood, which will be out with Bloomsbury in 2021. Alongside these projects, she teaches and guest-lectures at several institutions in the UK and US.
Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold
Dr Ramdarshan Bold is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Studies at University College London, where she teaches and researches on topics related to Publishing and Book Cultures. Her main research interest centres on contemporary authorship, publishing, and reading, with a focus on children’s and YA books. She is currently working on several projects that explore issues of ‘diversity’ and inclusivity in children’s and YA publishing. Her book Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom was published with Palgrave in 2019.
Stacy Collins
Anastasia "Stacy" Collins (she/her/hers) holds an M.S. in LIS and an M.A. in Children's Literature, and is the Research & Instruction Librarian for Children's Literature and Social Work at the Simmons University Library. Outside of librarianship, Stacy is a children's literature scholar and reviewer as well as a trauma-informed facilitator with the Anti-Racism Collaborative of Massachusetts. She is the author of "Language, Power, and Oppression in the LIS Diversity Void," "The Cultural Doings and Undoings of the Sydney Taylor Book Award," and the Simmons Anti-Oppression Guide. Her work and scholarship centers the denaturalization and dismantling of systemic oppression in the intertwining fields of youth literature and librarianship. You can follow her online at @DarkLiterata.
Dr Yolanda Hood
Yolanda Hood, Ph.D., has been a librarian for sixteen years. She is currently the Metaliteracy and Student Engagement Librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Most of her years as a librarian were spent working in youth collections and curriculum materials centers in universities in the United States where she had the opportunity to provide programming for teens and outreach opportunities for universities. Although she has many research interests, her focus and most of her publications center on African American YA and Children's Literature. The project she is most proud of, however, is the diverse families database which helps identify books that depict the growing diversity of families. You can find the database at https://diversefamilies.org/ Yolanda is also the editor for Young Adult Library Services, a journal of the Young Adult Library Services Association which is a division of the American Library Association.
Dr Lydia Kokkola
Lydia Kokkola works at Oulu University in Northern Finland. Her current two projects are on
reading in English as a foreign language and literature for and about Arctic youth. Together with Roxanne Harde, she edited the Routledge collection, The Embodied Child: Readings in Children’s Literature and Culture (2018). Together with Sara ven den Bossche, she has edited an issue of Barnboken on diversity in Nordic Literature for Children and Teens.
Dr Lisa Chu Shen
Lisa Chu Shen is a Zhi Yuan Scholar at Shanghai International Studies University who researches in the field of children's and young adult literature and culture, with a particular focus on the representation and construction of gender and sexuality. She has published in Children's Literature in Education, The Lion and the Unicorn, Contemporary Women's Writing, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and Neohelicon, etc.
Abdi Nazemian
Abdi Nazemian is the author of three novels. His first, The Walk-In Closet, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His most recent, Like a Love Story, was awarded a Stonewall Honor. His screenwriting credits include the films The Artist's Wife, The Quiet, and Menendez: Blood Brothers, and the television series The Village and Almost Family. He has been an executive producer and associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me By Your Name and Little Woods. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, two children and their dog Disco. You can find him on Instagram: @abdaddy.