Opening Keynote Speaker

Jennifer De Leon is the author of the YA novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (Simon & Schuster) which was chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection, and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing (UMass Press), which is a recipient of the Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is also the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press), an anthology that won an International Latino Book Award. An Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and faculty member in the MFA in Program at Bay Path University, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more. Jenn makes her home outside the Boston area with her husband and two sons. Her next YA novel, Maya, is forthcoming in August 2022. Also on the way are two children’s picture books—So Many Gifts, and a biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú.