TCU Summer Literacy Institute

Newbery Honor award recipient Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of numerous non-fiction and historical fiction titles for picture book, chapter book, middle grade and young adult readers. Her work has been named to ALA Notable Books and Bank Street Best Children’s Book lists.

Her verse picture book biography of Harriet Tubman, Before She Was Harriet was nominated for an NAACP image award and received a Jane Addams Honor, Christopher Award, and Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Finding Langston, the first in the Finding Langston trilogy, was the winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. Her picture book, They Call Me Teach, received the 2025 Jane Addams Award. Her MG novel-in-verse, One Big Open Sky, was recipient of the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor, as well as being named a Best Book of 2024 by Kirkus, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times.

She is the host of KidLitTV's Past Present: Giving Past Stories New Life.

Lesa is the mother of four and frequently collaborates with her husband, illustrator James Ransome. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York where she consumes large quantities of books and chocolate and each day, she takes long walks and short naps. In between she writes. Find out more at: www.lesaclineransome.com

Meg Medina served as the 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her newest middle-grade novel, Graciela in the Abyss, is her first fantasy. She is also the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, a 2018 Kirkus Prize finalist, and is followed by two more acclaimed books about the Suárez family: Merci Suárez Can’t Dance and Merci Suárez Plays It Cool. Her young adult novels include Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, which won the 2014 Pura Belpré Author Award, and  was published in 2023 as a graphic novel illustrated by Mel Valentine Vargas; Burn Baby Burn, which was long-listed for the National Book Award; and The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind. She is also the author of picture books No More Señora Mimí / No más Señora Mimí, Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away / Evelyn del Rey se muda, illustrated by Sonia Sánchez, Jumpstart’s 2020 Read for the Record selection; Mango, Abuela, and Me, illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Author Award Honor Book; and Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award; and biographies for young readers She Persisted: Sonia Sotomayor and She Persisted: Pura Belpré, the latter with Marilisa Jiménez García. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia.