2020 Virtual Convention

Each November thousands of literacy educators from across the country make the journey to a Convention that inspires their practice and rejuvenates their profession. They leave with strong strategies and best practices for teaching literacy, language, and composition. They learn new ideas for delivering instruction that engages students and addresses the most pressing needs within the school and district. This year, attendees will have these dynamic experiences via our first ever virtual Convention. Attendees will:

Discover nearly 400 sessions to engage, inspire, and expand your professional development.
Choose from a range of live, scheduled, and on-demand content.
Have exclusive access to sessions up to 60 days following the Convention.

Join us this November to find new teaching allies, new connections with luminaries and authors, and fresh inspiration to bring back to classrooms around the country.

General Session & All-Attendee Event Speakers

We are thrilled to announce the speakers for our General Sessions and All-Attendee Event! Please see our speaker page for a listing of all of our inspirational speakers.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Friday, November 20

Author, Sabrina & Corina: Stories

Joy Harjo

Saturday, November 21

23rd Poet Laureate of the United States

Andrea Davis Pinkney

Saturday, November 21

Author, Martin Rising: Requiem For a King

Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Sunday, November 22

Cofounder of Black Lives Matter

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

General Session Friday, November 20

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is from Denver, Colorado. Her fiction has appeared in The American Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Idaho Review, Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Fajardo-Anstine has received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and Hedgebrook. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida.

Joy Harjo

General Session Saturday, November 21

Joy Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the United States Artist Fellowship. Harjo’s latest is a book of poetry from Norton, An American Sunrise.

Andrea Davis Pinkney

General Session Saturday, November 21

Andrea Davis Pinkney has had an illustrious thirty-year career in various facets of the publishing industry. Pinkney is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of numerous books for children and young adults, including Martin Rising: Requiem for a King, The Red Pencil, and Rhythm Ride: A Trip through the Motown Sound. Her work has garnered multiple Coretta Scott King Book Awards, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor, and the Parenting Publications gold medal, among other citations. She is a four-time NAACP Image Award nominee, and recipient of both the Regina Medal and the Arbuthnot Honor Award, for her singular body of work and distinguished contribution to the field of children’s literature. Additionally, she has served in a variety of leadership and executive roles, including her current role as vice president and executive editor at Scholastic, where she has served since 2005.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors

General Session Sunday, November 22

Patrisse Khan-Cullors is an artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, California. Cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and founder of the Los Angeles-based grassroots organization Dignity and Power Now, she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, popular public speaker, and a Sydney Peace Prize recipient. For 20 years, Khan-Cullors has been on the frontlines of criminal justice reform, and is currently leading Reform L.A. Jails, a ballot initiative that was won in March 2020. She is currently the faculty director of Prescott College’s new Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA program, which she developed by nesting a curriculum focused on the intersection of art, social justice, and community organizing that is first of its kind in the nation. Khan-Cullors is also the author of the instant New York Times bestseller, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, with asha bandele.