2008 Children / Teens Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Natasha Friend

A former middle-school teacher and camp director, Natasha Friend is the author of three novels for young adults. Perfect, a Book Sense Pick, won the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature in 2004 and Nebraska’s Golden Sower Award, Young Adult Category, in 2007. Lush was named a 2007 ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Entertainment Weekly called Bounce, published in 2007, “one terrific coming-of-age novel.” Friend, who lives in Connecticut with her husband and two little boys, is hard at work on her fourth book.

Lauren Weinstein

Lauren Weinstein’s most recent book, Girl Stories, was published by Henry Holt and rated one of Booklist’s top 10 great graphic novels for teens. Her work has been featured in Yale University Press’s Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories and Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Comics 2007. Currently Lauren teaches drawing and cartooning to children and adults at the 92nd Street Y, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts. In 2002 she was the recipient of a Xeric Grant, which allowed her to self-publish her first book, Inside Vineyland. Her comics and illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, McSweeney’s, LA Weekly, The Chicago Reader, Kramer’s Ergot, and Seattle’s The Stranger. Currently she is working on the sequel to Girl Stories, tentatively entitled Calamity. Her sci-fi fantasy comic, The Goddess of War, will be published in February 2008 by PictureBox.