Program

Lara Saguisag is Georgiou Chair in Children’s Literature and Literacy at New York University and the author of Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics.
She studies the ways children’s literature participates in discourses of climate change.

 

She is
Associate Professor and Georgiou Chair in Children’s Literature and Literacy
Department of Teaching and Learning, New York University
Vice President/President-Elect, Children’s Literature Association
Associate Editor, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society

Jeannie Baker is the author/artist of many award-winning children’s picture books.
Her characteristic use of collage and mixed media to create detailed and elaborate collages is stunning and unique.

Awards and Honours include:

‘Where the forest meets the sea’ was a Boston Globe-Horn Honour Book and received an
IBBY Honour Award and a Friends of the Earth Award in the UK.
‘Window’ was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal UK
‘Window ‘and ‘Mirror’ won the Children’s Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year Award
Baker was the IBBY Australian nominee for the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration.

Originally from the UK, Jeannie lives in Australia. Find Jeannie online at www.jeanniebaker.com

Sydney Smith is the award-winning author and illustrator of Small in the City and Do you Remember? as well as the illustrator of I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson among others.
Sydney has received multiple awards including New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Awards, two Carnegie Illustration Awards and in 2024 received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, internationally recognizing his contribution to books for children.
Sydney currently lives by the sea in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and children.

Picture book author Hiroshi Abe was born in 1948 in Asahikawa, Hokkaido.
Before devoting himself to his artistic endeavors, Abe worked as a zookeeper at Asahikawa Zoo in Asahikawa City for 25 years, from 1972.
In 2011, he opened Gallery Purupuru, a space dedicated to art, to be enjoyed by both children and grownups.
He currently focuses on creating picture books, while participating in exhibitions and giving lectures and workshops throughout Japan.

 

Abe’s book One Stormy Night (『あらしのよるに』, text by Yuichi Kimura, Kodansha) won the Kodansha Publishing Culture Award for Children’s Books and the Sankei Juvenile Literature Publishing Culture Award JR Award, among many others.
He was included in the IBBY Honor List 2014 for To the New World (『新世界へ』, Kaiseisha) and was the winner of the 4th JBBY Award. He has been nominated for the BIB a total of seven times.
He has published more than 250 books so far, including First Book of Zoo Guide for Small Children (『どうぶつえんガイド』, Fukuinkan Shoten).
Abe is the Japanese nominee for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration.

Suzy Lee studied Painting and Book Arts in Korea and the UK and has published acclaimed picture books worldwide. Her work explores the physicality of books and the potential of wordless picture books, capturing children’s playfulness and energy. She runs Hintoki Press, an independent artist’s book press dedicated to Korean folktales, and Vacances, a collective of Korean picture book artists.

Lee is best known for Mirror, Wave, and Shadow, collectively referred to as The Border Trilogy. She was awarded the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Award (Illustrator) and received a Bologna Ragazzi Award Special Mention (Fiction) in 2022 for Summer. Her other author-illustrated works include Danced Away, The Shade Tree, River the Black Dog, Lines, The Zoo, and Alice in Wonderland. Beyond her own books, Lee has illustrated works such as See You Someday Soon (written by Pat Zietlow Miller) and The Yulu Linen (written by Cao Wenxuan), the latter of which won a 2021 Bologna Ragazzi Award Special Mention (Fiction). She is also the author of the essays Tangible Thoughts and Suzy Lee: The Border Trilogy. She currently lives and works in Korea.

www.suzyleebooks.com

A Korean author of children’s and young adult literature, Lee Geum-yi was born in Cheongwon-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do in 1962, and grew up in Seoul. She embarked on her career as an author in 1984, at a time when children’s literature in Korea was actively exploring new ways forward. Over the four decades since, she has continued to captivate readers young and old, in addition to critics, with more than 50 books that have helped shape the growth of children’s literature, and presided over the birth and expansion of young adult literature. Lee was included in the shortlist for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Award for writing.  Lee is the Korean nominee for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award for author.

Picture book author Baek Heena tells magical stories that just might take place right under our eyes. Her books, which she both writes and illustrates, include Magic Candies, Moon Sherbet, The Bath Fairy (2012), and more. She has won awards such as the 2020 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the 3^rd Yong-A Grand Culture Award. An exhibition of her picture books was held at the Seoul Arts Center in 2023.

Kim Dong-soo is known for her pared-down, bold, but innocent works unconstrained by conventional thinking, told from a child’s perspective.
She received the Grand Prize at the 2001 Korea Publishing Arts Competition, the 2002 Award for Excellence at the Borim Original Picture Book Competition, and the 65th Korean Publishing Culture Award.
Books she has written and illustrated include The Day I Caught a Cold, The Invincible Rubber Band-Powered Machine, Give Mommy a Kiss, Goodbye, Farewell, and Things I Must Do Today.
Kim is the Korean nominee for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration.