Bright Before Us Like a Flame

About the Author

Sasa Aakil is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and the 2021 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate. A potter, painter, poet, printmaker, and bassist, she lives and works near Washington, DC. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post Magazine, Bethesda Magazine, and on WTOP for her role in the 2020 "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" project. She has won numerous writing awards and performed at the Kennedy Center's "What's Going On" festival in 2023. Sasa is the founder of the "If All the Trees Were Pens" Open Mic and recently published her first chapbook, "the culmination of all my despair and the music that saves me." She earned her BFA from Howard University in 2024. ELIZABETH ACEVEDO was the 2022 Young People's Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High-which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal-and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer's Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her family. Kathy Crutcher has mentored young writers since 2003, driven by a belief in the power of story to build a more just and inclusive next generation. Since founding Shout Mouse Press in 2014, she has helped publish 500+ youth authors and 60+ books. For her work in diversity, inclusion, and narrative change, she received Duke University's 2021 Changemaker Award in Social Justice. Kathy holds a BA from Duke and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Originally from Cincinnati, she has made DC her home since 2009, where she lives with her family and dreams big dreams for Shout Mouse and its authors.