Contacts:
Miranda Paul, WNDB™ Mentorship Co-Chair
Laurie Ann Thompson, WNDB™ Mentorship Co-Chair
Steven dos Santos, Mentorship Committee Member
mentor@diversebooks.org
www.diversebooks.org

WNDB™ Mentorship program names ten recipients, will name two additional winners

The We Need Diverse Books™ (WNDB™) Mentorship committee is pleased to announce the selected applicants for their 2017 program. The ten recipients and ten award-winning mentors are part of the newly expanded program, which has doubled in size over its inaugural year. Additionally, two bonus mentorship recipients will be named, thanks to the generosity of young adult authors Kiersten White and Jodi Meadows.

The 2017 WNDB Mentorship winners include: Olivia Aserr (illustration), Joanne Wong (illustration), Kim MacPherson (picture book), Urania Smith (picture book), Sumayyah Beck (middle grade), Patricia J Miranda (middle grade), Maya Prasad (young adult), A M Dassu (young adult), Pamela Courtney (nonfiction/folklore), and Teresa Robeson (nonfiction). Two additional young adult winners will be named in the coming weeks. The 2017 WNDB mentors include a highly-acclaimed lineup of children’s book creators: Jane Yolen, Kevin Lewis, Carole Boston Weatherford, Padma Venkatraman, Alex Sanchez, Tara Lazar, William Alexander, Juana Martinez-Neal, Jessixa Bagley, Kiersten White, Jodi Meadows, and WNDB founder and president Ellen Oh.

Winning mentees and their mentors will spend the year communicating in a custom-tailored fashion. The program aims to foster talent by offering craft-based and informational guidance to writers and illustrators of diverse books for children and/or to diverse children’s book creators  by establishing relationships with respected industry professionals. Short biographies of each of the winning mentees and their mentors are published at http://weneeddiversebooks.org/mentor-bios/.