Jennifer De Leon is the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster, 2020) and the editor of Wise Latinas (University of Nebraska Press). An Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University, and a GrubStreet instructor and board member, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals, including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her essay collection, White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing, will be published by UMass Press in Spring 2021. She lives outside of Boston with her husband two sons.
Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From tells the story of first-generation American LatinX Liliana Cruz does what it takes to fit in at her new nearly all-white school. But when family secrets spill out and racism at school ramps up, she must decide what she believes in and take a stand.
Desmond Hall is a Jamaican born author of debut YA novel, Your Corner Dark. He has written and directed the HBO feature movie, “A Day in Black and White,” which was nominated for the Gordon Parks Award. He’s also written and directed a full-length stage play, “Stockholm, Brooklyn” that won the Audience Award at the Downtown Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Theater in NYC, and was picked for the Public Theater's New Works Series. Desmond has worked as a high school teacher in Brooklyn, and counseled teenage ex-cons after their release from Rikers Island Correctional Institution. As an advertising creative director, he’s written many TV campaigns, two Superbowl commercials and won multiple awards while running the creative side of Spike Lee’s advertising agency. While working in the advertising and film industry, he served on the board of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Advertising Council, judged the One Show, Addys and the NYC Downtown Film Festival. He’s also been named one of Variety magazine’s Top 50 Creatives to Watch.
Your Corner Dark is a fast-paced thriller that has been described as American Street meets Long Way Down. This searing and gritty novel takes an unflinching look at the harsh realities of gang life in Jamaica and how far a teen is willing to go for family. The book confronts police brutality, “Colorism”, gang culture and political deception.
