Cynthia Leitich Smith is the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize laureate and a New York Times bestselling author of books for young readers, including Hearts Unbroken, which won the American Indian Library Association’s Youth Literature Award. Her 2021 releases are the middle grade anthology Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, and novel Sisters of the Neversea. She is also the author-curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and serves as the Katherine Paterson Inaugural Endowed Chair on the faculty of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Smith is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and lives in Austin, Texas.