Author Talk: Star Child | Ibi Zoboi with Glory Edim

Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.

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Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her YA novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and and her debut middle grade novel, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, was a New York Times bestseller. She is the author of Pride, a contemporary YA remix of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and editor of the anthology, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. Her most recent bestseller, Punching the Air, is a YA novel in verse, co-authored by prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five. Raised in New York City, Ibi now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children.

Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a book club and digital platform that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood. She edited the Well-Read Black Girl anthology, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and named a best book of the year by Library Journal. The winner of the Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Edim has worked as a creative strategist for over ten years at startups and cultural institutions. She serves on the board of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore.