Speakers
The caliber of speakers at NCTE’s Annual Convention is consistently singled out by attendees as one of the best things about attending. These individuals are sure to make #NCTE23 the most meaningful professional learning experience of your year!
Register today to hear from these and other great speakers at #NCTE23!
Keynote Speakers
This year’s keynote speakers bring a range of perspectives to the mic. We’re thrilled to share this stellar lineup with you!
All times are Eastern Time.
This page will be continuously updated.
Jacqueline Woodson
Friday General Session | 11/17/2023 8:15 a.m.
Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Her books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award- and NAACP Image Award-winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and Each Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
Tom Hanks
Saturday General Session | 11/18/2023 9:45 a.m.
Tom Hanks is an actor, director, writer, and producer. He has starred in over 40 films, including Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Big, Sleepless in Seattle, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and many more. Most recently, he was seen in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, and he is the author of a best-selling collection of stories, Uncommon Type. The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is his debut novel.
Angie Thomas
Sunday General Session | 11/19/2023 12:00 p.m.
Angie Thomas is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novels The Hate U Give, On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose as well as Find Your Voice: A Guided Journal for Writing Your Truth. She is also a coauthor of the bestselling collaborative novels Blackout and Whiteout. Thomas divides her time between her native Jackson, Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia.
Angus Fletcher
NCTE Story Experience | 11/17/2023 6:30 p.m.
Angus Fletcher (PhD, Yale) is a professor of story science at Ohio State's Project Narrative. His research has been called "mind blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell and "life changing" by Brené Brown. His most recent books are Wonderworks and Storythinking. In 2023, he was awarded the Commendation Medal by the US Army for his "groundbreaking research" with the Army Nurse Corps and US Army Special Operations.
Meal Event Speakers
Ticketed meals are offered during the NCTE Annual Convention. These events include talks by education luminaries and announcements of award winners by NCTE Sections and groups, including the Children’s Book Awards. Tickets to meal events can be purchased when registering for the Convention.
All times are Eastern Time.
This page will be continuously updated.
Antero Garcia
English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Luncheon | 11/17/2023 11:30 a.m.
Antero Garcia is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research. Prior to completing his PhD, Garcia was an English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. His recent research explores learning and literacies in tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons and the civic learning possibilities in various learning environments. Based on his research, Garcia co-designed the Critical Design and Gaming School—a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. His recent books include All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology, Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative (coauthored with Cathy Fleischer), and Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (coauthored with Nicole Mirra). Garcia currently co-edits La Cuenta, an online publication centering the voices and perspectives of individuals labeled undocumented in the US: https://lacuenta.substack.com.
Nicole Mirra
English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Luncheon | 11/17/2023 11:30 a.m.
Nicole Mirra is an associate professor of urban teacher education in the Department of Learning & Teaching at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. She previously taught secondary literacy and debate in Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California. Her work utilizes participatory design methods in classroom, community, and digital spaces to collaboratively create civic learning environments with youth and educators that disrupt discourses and structures of racial injustice and creatively compose liberatory social futures. Her books include Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research: Transforming Inquiry with Researchers, Educators, and Students (coauthored with Antero Garcia and Ernest Morrell), and Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (coauthored with Antero Garcia).
Dashka Slater
Middle Level Section Luncheon | 11/17/2023 11:30 a.m.
Dashka Slater is the New York Times bestselling author of The 57 Bus, which won the Stonewall Book Award and was a YALSA nonfiction finalist. She is also the author of the nonfiction title Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. Slater's fiction includes The Book of Fatal Errors; the picture book Escargot, which won the Wanda Gag Book Award; Baby Shoes; The Antlered Ship, which was a Junior Library Guild Selection and received four-starred reviews; and Dangerously Ever After. She is also an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, the New York Times Magazine, and Mother Jones. She lives in California.
Renée Watson
Secondary Section Luncheon | 11/18/2023 12:30 p.m.
Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, educator, and community activist. Her books have sold over one million copies. Her young adult novel Piecing Me Together received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor. Her children's picture books and novels for teens have received several awards and international recognition. She has given readings and lectures at many places, including the United Nations, the Library of Congress, and the US embassies in Japan and New Zealand. Her poetry and fiction center the experiences of Black girls and women and explore themes of home, identity, and the intersections of race, class, and gender.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Children’s Book Awards Luncheon | 11/18/2023 12:30 p.m.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called "a winning debut." She was a 2019 Edward Albee Foundation Fellow, a 2018 Pa Gya! Literary Festival guest author, a 2018 Ake Arts and Book Festival guest author, a 2018 Hobart Festival of Women Writers guest author, a 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival scholar, a 2016 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence, a 2015 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and in both 2015 and 2014 she was shortlisted for a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship. In April 2015 she was the opening speaker at TEDxAccra. Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a monthly writing fellowship at Manhattan's Center for Faith and Work.
Georgia Heard
Children’s Book Awards Luncheon | 11/18/2023 12:30 p.m.
Georgia Heard holds an MFA in writing from Columbia University and is the founder of The Poet’s Studio, an online platform that offers writing workshops. She taught writing in the New York City schools for over a decade and currently works as a consultant, visiting author, and keynote speaker in school districts and conferences in the US and internationally. Heard received the NCTE 2023 Excellence in Poetry for Children Award and has written numerous children's books, including Welcome to the Wonder House (coauthored with Rebecca Kai Dotlich) and My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness. She has also authored many books on teaching writing and poetry, including the forthcoming second edition of Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School.
Dayna Lorentz
Children’s Book Awards Luncheon | 11/18/2023 12:30 p.m.
Dayna Lorentz is the author of Of a Feather, the Dogs of the Drowned City trilogy, and the No Safety in Numbers trilogy. She has worked in and around the foster care system, most recently as a law clerk in the Vermont family courts, and has just started exploring the sport of falconry. Lorentz lives in Vermont with her husband and two children.
Traci Sorell
Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast | 11/19/2023 7:00 a.m.
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Traci Sorell writes bestselling, award-winning fiction and nonfiction in a variety of formats for children and young adults. Many of her stories highlight Cherokee values such as cooperation, education, and humility. Sorell is a two-time Sibert Medal and Orbis Pictus honoree for her nonfiction work. Her first five books received awards from the American Indian Library Association. In 2023, she shares Contenders: Two Native Baseball Players, One World Series, a nonfiction picture book biography illustrated by Arigon Starr, and Mascot, a middle grade fiction novel-in-verse coauthored with poet Charles Waters. A former federal Indigenous law attorney and advocate, Sorell understands and appreciates the critical roles that reading, critical thinking, and creativity play in education and future success.
Featured Speakers
Featured speakers present at designated sessions that address current issues in the field that reverberate through our classrooms.
Cultivating Curiosity, Creativity, and Gratitude—How Two Authors Spread the Magic of Wonder across All 50 States and How You Can Do the Same in Your Classroom
Nick Garcia, Washington College; Amanda Ensor; Alison Morris, First Book; Matthew Swanson, Random House Children's Books, First Book; Robbi Behr, Random House Children's Books, First Book; Bridget Bunten | 11/16/2023 9:30 a.m.
Children’s book creators Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson spent last year visiting schools in all 50 states on an epic road trip to promote reading, inspire storytelling, and help students tap into curiosity and gratitude as sources for their own creativity. In this session they share the tools they used and things they discovered, to help you create classrooms that cultivate life-long learning.
Random House Children's Books, First Book
Expanding Young Learners’ Literacy Skills in History, STEAM, and Social Emotional Learning with the Smithsonian
Monique M. Chism, Smithsonian Institution; Ashley Naranjo, Smithsonian Office of the Under Secretary for Education; Ariel Moon, National Museum of African American History and Culture; Emily Porter, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute; Maureen Leary, National Postal Museum | 11/17/2023 12:30 p.m.
Join a panel of Smithsonian education experts to explore PreK-3 classroom strategies, rooted in inquiry, perspective-taking, understanding the world around us, and learning through play. Teachers will leave with a strong foundation in how to use museums and their collections as a springboard for fun and meaningful learning experiences that inspire curiosity and connection.
Smithsonian Institution
