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 #NCTE24 the most meaningful professional learning experience of your year!
Register today to hear from these and other great speakers at #NCTE24!
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.
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Thursday Opening General Session | 11/21/2024 4:00 p.m
Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, Florida. She received her undergraduate and law degrees, both with honors, from Harvard University, then served as a law clerk for three federal judges, including Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson subsequently practiced law in the private sector, worked as an attorney and later as Vice Chair and Commissioner of the US Sentencing Commission, and served as an assistant federal public defender. In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Elevated to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021, Jackson made history in 2022 when President Joseph Biden nominated her as an Associate Justice. The first Black woman ever confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States, she took her seat on June 30, 2022.
In her recently published memoir, Lovely One, Justice Jackson shares how her heritage, powerful family stories, and formative experiences throughout her life shaped her academic and legal careers.
Kate McKinnon
Friday General Session | 11/22/2024 8:15 a.m.
Kate McKinnon is an award-winning performer and writer best known for her tenure as an Emmy Award-winning cast member on Saturday Night Live. Young readers will recognize her voice roles as Ms. Fiona Frizzle in The Magic School Bus Rides Again for Netflix and as Lulu the Guinea Pig in DC League of Super-Pets. Her film work includes Ghostbusters, Bombshell, Yesterday, and Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-nominated worldwide blockbuster, Barbie. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science is her debut novel.
Ada Limón
Sunday General Session | 11/24/2024 12:00 p.m.
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Bright Dead Things, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and The Hurting Kind, which was short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her upcoming children’s book, And, Too, the Fox, is scheduled for release in January 2025. Limón is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her new book, In Praise of Mystery, is a transcendent picture book featuring the poem that will travel into space on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will be launched to the second moon of Jupiter in October 2024.
As the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, her signature project, called You Are Here, focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. She will serve as Poet Laureate until the spring of 2025. In October 2023, she was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, and she was named a TIME magazine Woman of the Year in 2024.
Bryan Stevenson
Saturday General Session | 11/23/2024 9:45 a.m.
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children seventeen or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.
Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.
Just Mercy, his book chronicling one EJI case, is a bestseller and inspired a blockbuster film.
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.
Ruta Sepetys (rutasepetys.com) is an internationally acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. Her novels Between Shades of Gray, Out of the Easy, Salt to the Sea, The Fountains of Silence, and I Must Betray You have won or been shortlisted for more than 40 book prizes and are included on more than 60 state award lists. She is also the author of You: The Story. A winner of the Carnegie Medal, Ruta is passionate about the power of history and literature to foster global awareness and connectivity. Follow her on X and Instagram and on Facebook.
Steve Sheinkin is the acclaimed author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories, including Impossible Escape, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Bomb. His accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, and three National Book Award finalist honors. He can be found online at SteveSheinkin.com; you can also follow him on X and on Facebook.
Celeste Ng is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in more than 30 languages.
Sneed B. Collard III has written more than ninety books for young people, including his newest picturebooks Border Crossings; Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-of-a-Kind Creatures and Waiting for a Warbler. He is the 2024 recipient of the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Before beginning his writing career, Sneed graduated with honors in marine biology from the University of California at Berkeley and earned a master’s in scientific instrumentation from U.C. Santa Barbara. To research and write his nonfiction books, he has traveled to Australia, Costa Rica, Southeast Asia, South America, and the deep-sea floor.
In addition to his nonfiction, Sneed has written several popular middle grades and YA novels and is a regular contributor to adult nature and science magazines. His third book for adults, Birding for Boomers—and Everyone Else Brave Enough to Embrace the World’s Most Rewarding and Frustrating Activity, was released this fall. Sneed is an entertaining, award-winning speaker; he has visited more than six hundred schools and has been invited to more than one hundred professional educational conferences.
To learn more about Sneed, visit his website, and keep up with the birding, writing, and photography blog he writes with his son, Braden, at www.FatherSonBirding.com.
Sarah Everett is the author of The Probability of Everything as well as several books for teens. She is 2024 recipient of the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® for Outstanding Fiction for Children.
Charlotte’s Web was the first book that ever made her cry, and while she despises spiders, she still has an abiding love of stories that move her. When she is not reading or writing, she is dreaming about summer, gearing up for her next travel adventure, perfecting her tree pose, or yodeling with her dog.
Her next book, The Shape of Lost Things, is a heartfelt exploration of family and change as twelve-year-old Skye reunites with her older brother, Finn, after he spent four years on the run with their father.
Everett lives in western Canada.
