2023 Festival Authors & Speakers

Dave Gonzales is a writer, producer, and podcast host living in Denver, Colorado. He has written about movies and pop culture for The New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes.com, TVGuide.com, VanityFair.com, Thrillist.com, Polygon.com, and Geek.com including a weekly column about Marvel at LatinoReview.com from 2013-2017. While attending New York University, he co-founded the independent podcast “Fighting In The War Room,” one of Time Magazine’s top ten podcasts of 2021. He has also co-hosted several television reaction podcasts with Joanna Robinson such as “A Storm of Spoilers” (Game of Thrones) and “Republic City Dispatch” (The Legend of Korra). After returning to Colorado, Dave expanded his podcast work, hosting “The Storm: A Lost Rewatch Podcast” and “Trial By Content for The Ringer network.” Along with with Neil Miller of One Perfect Shot and Film School Rejects, Dave hosts a Patreon podcast promoting film appreciation called “Da7e and Neil’s Pop Culture Adventure.” He bought Spectacular Spider-Man #226 in 1995 and believes Ben Reilly was the real Peter Parker. He has been an Animation Producer for the Teen Mom franchise on MTV since 2009. He’s on Twitter/X (@da7e) and Instagram/Threads (@grumpyda7e).

Featured Book

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Sheyda F.A. Jahanbani

Tania James

Tania James is the author of the novels The Tusk That Did the Damage and Atlas of Unknowns and the short story collection Aerogrammes. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Tania James is the author of four works of fiction, all published by Knopf: The Tusk That Did the Damage, which was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Financial Times Oppenheimer Award; Aerogrammes and Other Stories, named a Best Book of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and The San Francisco Chronicle; and the novel Atlas of Unknowns, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her short stories have appeared in Freeman’s: The Future of New Writing; Granta; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; and One Story, among other places, and featured on Symphony Space Selected Shorts. An associate professor of English in the MFA program at George Mason University, her new novel, Loot, was published in June 2023, and named a summer pick by The Today Show and The New York Times Book Review.

Featured Book

Loot

Eskor David Johnson

Kim Johnson

Vicki Johnson

Bret Anthony Johnston

Peniel Joseph

Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values; founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy; Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs; Public Policy & International Affairs Program (PPIA) Board Chair; and distinguished service professor and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. An internationally recognized scholar-activist and author and editor of seven award-winning books, most recently The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century, winner of the 2023 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Additionally in 2022, he was named the grand prize winner of the 2022 Hamilton Book Award, the University of Texas at Austin’s highest research honor for his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. He is a frequent national commentator on issues of race, civil rights, and democracy. A fellow of the Society of American Historians and a contributing writer for CNN.com, he lives in Austin, Texas.

Featured Book

LBJ's America: The Life and Legacies of Lyndon Baines Johnson

Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack

Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack is a cookbook author, food blogger, YouTuber, and recipe developer in Denver, Colorado. She was raised in El Paso, Texas, and draws culinary inspiration from her grandmother’s old-world northern Mexican recipes and her mother’s comforting south-of-the-border home-style dishes. Though she writes primarily about her culinary adventures on her award-winning blog, MuyBuenoBlog.com, she also is a professional recipe developer, on-camera host, and is the author of Muy Bueno, Latin Twist, and her latest cookbook Muy Bueno Fiestas.

Yvette has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Huffington Post, and Yahoo. The Muy Bueno blog has received several online accolades, including being named a SAVEUR finalist for Best Use of Video and Best Food Blog in 2014. SAVEUR finalist for Best Regional Cuisine Blog and Best Group Blog in 2012. Best Food Blogs of 2013 by The Latin Kitchen.

Yvette was named one of the Latina Bloggers You Must Know in 2014 by Latina magazine. The Food Blogs You Should Be Reading Right Now, According To Saveur. She is known as one of the leading Latina bloggers in the U.S. and in 2012 was invited to the White House as part of LATISM’s Top Blogueras Retreat.

Besides her blog, Yvette has also been featured in Latina magazine, Cosmo for Latinas, People en Español, and the websites of NBC, Today, The Huffington Post, SAVEUR, Siempre Mujer, and BuzzFeed, among other media outlets. She has also been on several radio and TV shows.

Yvette is a brand ambassador and develops original recipes for a number of brands.

She lives in the beautiful state of Colorado with her husband and two children.

You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram (@muybuenocooking) and on Facebook (Muy Bueno Cookbook).

Featured Book

Muy Bueno: FIESTAS: 100+ Delicious Mexican Recipes for Celebrating the Year

Claudia Guadalupe Martínez

Guadalupe García McCall

Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers and adults, including Furia, a Reese’s YA Book Club selection and the 2021 Inaugural Pura Belpré Young Adult Gold Medalist. Her books have received many accolades such as the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard, Whitney Award, Cybils Award, Américas Award, Bank Street Spanish Language Book Awards, among others.

They have also been featured in the Best of Year lists of the New York City Public Library Library, Salt Lake Public Library Library, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and those of many states’.

She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains in Utah. An inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she’s also a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children’s and Young Adult program. Yamile is also a founding member of Las Musas, the first collective of women and nonbinary Latine authors. She taught herself English with a Spanish/English dictionary, and now has been faculty at TinHouse Workshop and a keynote speaker at The Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Featured Book

Calling the Moon: 16 Period Stories from BIPOC Authors

Aurelio Manuel Montemayor

Matt Moore

Magdalena Mora

Elio Morillo

Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton

Burk Murchison

J Muzacz

Leah Myers

Sarafina El-Badry Nance

From sanitation workers to firefighters, Venetian gondoliers to professional baseball players, power linemen to forestry technicians, Allison Orr creates award-winning choreography with unlikely performers. Inspired by the beauty and virtuosity in the practiced movement of labor, Allison’s dances feature the often-overlooked choreography of work that sustains our everyday lives. Building on her background in anthropology and social work, Allison founded Forklift Danceworks, and over the past 20+ years she and her team have honed a method of ethnographic choreography that engages community members as co-authors in the creation of large-scale civic spectacle. Challenging audiences to expand notions of dance and performer, her dances have been performed for audiences of 60 to 6,000+. Allison has been named a MacDowell Fellow, a Dance | USA Fellow in Social Change, and a Doris Duke United States Artist Fellow. Her large-scale work The Trash Project is the subject of a feature-length documentary film entitled Trash Dance. Allison is a 4th generation Texan and lives in Austin with her husband, two children, and their two dogs.

Featured Book

Dance Works: Stories of Creative Collaboration

Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez †

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Rachel Renée Russell is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dork Diaries, an international blockbuster series chronicling the life and misadventures of middle school students, Nikki Maxwell and her best friends Chloe and Zoey. With humor and wit, Rachel’s books encourage tweens to embrace their individuality and always let their inner dork shine through. The Dork Diaries series has been translated into forty-two languages worldwide and its characters are as diverse as the millions of tweens who read the books. With more than fifty-five million books in print, the series has garnered such honors as two Kids’ Book Choice Awards, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children, the Milner Award for Children’s Literature, and a Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Book of the Year nomination. Rachel is also the author of a second New York Times bestselling series, The Misadventures of Max Crumbly, which received a Kids’ Book Choice Award. Her daughter, Nikki Russell, is the illustrator for both book series. The mother-daughter team has released nineteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers.

Featured Book

Dork Diaries 15: Tales from a Not-So-Posh Paris Adventure

Rachel Renée Russell

Rachel Renée Russell is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dork Diaries, an international blockbuster series chronicling the life and misadventures of middle school students, Nikki Maxwell and her best friends Chloe and Zoey. With humor and wit, Rachel’s books encourage tweens to embrace their individuality and always let their inner dork shine through. The Dork Diaries series has been translated into forty-two languages worldwide and its characters are as diverse as the millions of tweens who read the books. With more than fifty-five million books in print, the series has garnered such honors as two Kids’ Book Choice Awards, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children, the Milner Award for Children’s Literature, and a Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Book of the Year nomination. Rachel is also the author of a second New York Times bestselling series, The Misadventures of Max Crumbly, which received a Kids’ Book Choice Award. Her daughter, Nikki Russell, is the illustrator for both book series. The mother-daughter team has released nineteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers.

Featured Book

Dork Diaries 15: Tales from a Not-So-Posh Paris Adventure

Kennedy Ryan

Aida Salazar

Aida Salazar is an award-winning author, arts activist, and translator whose writings for adults and children explore issues of identity and social justice. She is the author of the critically acclaimed middle grade verse novels, The Moon Within (International Latino Book Award Winner); Land of the Cranes (Américas Award, California Library Association Beatty Award, Northern CA Book Award, NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, Jane Addams Peace Honor, International Latino Book Award Honor); as well as A Seed in the Sun (Tomás Rivera Children’s Book Award, Ala Rise (Feminist Book Project Top 10 Book, NCTE Notable Poetry/ Verse Novel Honor, Jane Addams Peace Award Finalist). Her other works include the picture book anthology, In the Spirit of a Dream: 13 Stories of Immigrants of Color; the bio picture book Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter; and the anthology Calling the Moon: Period Stories by BIPOC Authors. Aida is a founding member of Las Musas – a Latinx kidlit author collective. Her story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet production by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. She lives with her family of artists in Oakland, CA.

Featured Books

A Seed in the Sun

Calling the Moon: 16 Period Stories from BIPOC Authors

Christina Soontornvat

Zamora has Indigenous and settler community roots in the Mexico-Texas region. He grew up and attended schools on both sides of the border. Zamora is married to Dr. Angela Valenzuela and has two daughters, Clara and Luz, a grandson, Felix Jr., and granddaughter, Mía Luna. He has single-authored three books, co-edited three anthologies, assisted in the production of a Texas history text, co-authored a Texas history text for high schools, co-edited an Ebook on Tejano history, translated and edited a WWI diary, and written numerous scholarly articles, chapters and essays. Zamora has received seven book awards, a best-article prize, and a Fulbright García-Robles fellowship with a one-year residency at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. His latest lifetime achievements awards include: the 2017 Scholar of the year from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS), the 2017 NACCS Tejas Foco Premio Estrella de Aztlán Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2019 Ruth A. Allen Pioneer in Texas Working Class History Award from the Texas Center for Working-Class Studies, Collin College. Zamora is a lifetime member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a lifetime Fellow with the Texas State Historical Association. His extensive professional service includes the Presidency of the Texas State Historical Association in 2019-20, and founder/member (since 2013) of Academia Cuauhtli, a cultural revitalization program for elementary children, in collaboration with Austin ISD.

Featured Book

In Defense of My People

Ada Zhang