Discover New Authors & Beloved Favorites

Isabel Allende is a best-selling Chilean-American writer who was born in Lima, where her father, Tomás Allende, was Chile’s ambassador to Peru.

Kate DiCamillo, 2014-2015 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, was the fourth writer to hold this position. During her two-year term, DiCamillo traveled across America to promote her platform, “Stories Connect Us.”

Joy Harjo served as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The first Native American poet to serve in the position, Harjo is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, and is the author of nine books of poetry.

Meg Medina, 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, was the eighth writer to hold this position. During her term, Medina will engage readers across the country through her new platform Cuéntame!: Let’s talk books.

Claudia Rankine was born in Jamaica in 1963. She is the author of multiple poetry and nonfiction collections, including Just Us: An American Conversation (2020) and Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), winner of the Library of Congress Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.

Jason Reynolds, 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, was the seventh writer to hold this position. During his term, Reynolds visited small towns across America to have meaningful discussions with young people.

George Saunders is the bestselling author of 12 books, including “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain;” “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which won the Man Booker Prize; “Congratulations, by the Way;” “Tenth of December,” a National Book Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Folio Award; “The Braindead Megaphone;” and the story collections “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “Pastoralia,” and “In Persuasion Nation.”

Joy Williams is the acclaimed author of four short story collections, two works of nonfiction and five novels, including “Harrow” (2021). Her many honors include the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.