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Writing for Young Readers, MFA
Faculty
The best of the best. The best writers, the best teachers. When it comes to pursuing an MFA in writing for young readers, you want to choose a program where you can study with the most accomplished writers in the field who are also devoted to the work of teaching. That’s exactly the team we have assembled. Winners of the industry’s biggest awards. People who have earned both critical and commercial success in writing for young readers and who can teach you how the work is done.
An Na
An Na is the author of A Step from Heaven, Wait for Me, The Fold, and The Place Between Breaths. Her awards include: the Michael L. Printz Award, International Reading Association Award, National Book Award Finalist, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Parents Choice Gold Award and New York Times Review Notable. She was on the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA program in writing for children and young adults.
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Tracey Baptiste
Tracey Baptiste is the New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft: The Crash and the acclaimed middle grade fantasy trilogy The Jumbies. which are Junior Library Guild Selections and received multiple starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. Angel’s Grace was named one of the 100 best books for reading and sharing. She has also written the middle grade nonfiction African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History, as well as the popular picture books: Because Claudette and Mermaid and Pirate. She taught at the Lesley University MFA program.
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Martha Brockenbrough
Martha Brockenbrough writes fiction and nonfiction for young readers, with 25 published and forthcoming titles that include picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, YA novels, and nonfiction for every age range. Her work has appeared on many best-of lists, including Booklist, Kirkus, Bank Street, YALSA, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and as Junior Library Guild Selections. Her novel The Game of Love and Death won the Washington State Book Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She was co-chair of faculty at VCFA’s WCYA MFA program.
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Ann Dávila Cardinal
Ann Dávila Cardinal's debut novel Five Midnights won the 2020 International Latino Book Award in the category of Best Young Adult Fantasy & Adventure, an AudioFile’s Earphones Award for the audiobook, and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. Category Five, also from Tor Teen was a 2021 finalist for the same International Latino Book Award category. She’s the author of the young adult horror novel, Breakup from Hell; Hispanic Star: Bad Bunny, the adult Puerto Rican magical realist mystery The Storyteller’s Death, You’ve Awoken Her, and We Need No Wings.
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David Macinnis Gill
David Macinnis Gill is the award-winning author of Soul Enchilada, Black Hole Sun, Invisible Sun, Shadow on the Sun, Rising Sun, Uncanny, and Zombie Train from HarperCollins/Greenwillow. He’s the author of The Sticky Note Plot, a craft guide for novelists. David’s books have been named ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Kirkus Best Book, a Bank Street College Best Books of the Year, and an NYPL Stuff for the Teen Age as well as nominated for many state and regional lists and awards. His short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Tennessee, was the President of ALAN (The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents), and is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He was on the faculty at VCFA.
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Erin Entrada Kelly
Erin Entrada Kelly has received numerous awards and recognition for her work, including the 2025 Newbery Medal for The First State of Being, 2018 Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe, a 2021 Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, the 2023 NAIBA Book of the Year Award for Those Kids From Fawn Creek, and 2017 APALA Award for The Land of Forgotten Girls, among many other honors. She is also a National Book Award Finalist and author/illustrator of Marisol Rainey and Felix Powell, stand-alone stories for younger readers. Her books are New York Times bestsellers. Erin has a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from McNeese State University, an MFA in fiction from Rosemont College, and an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Moore College of Art and Design. She lives in Delaware and has taught in the MFAC program at Hamline University.
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A.S. King
A.S. King has been called “One of the best Y.A. writers working today” by the New York Times Book Review and is the only writer to have won the Michael L. Printz Award twice, for 2023’s The Collectors and for 2020’s Dig, which also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. King is the author of other highly acclaimed novels including 2021’s SW/TCH, 2016’s Still Life with Tornado, 2015’s surrealist I Crawl Through It, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, Reality Boy, the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Ask the Passengers, Everybody Sees the Ants, 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz, among others. She also writes middle grade fiction as Amy Sarig King, including Attack of the Black Rectangles. In 2022, King received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature. She is a former faculty member at VCFA.
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Dashka Slater
Dashka Slater is a New York Times bestselling author of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction for children, teenagers, and adults, her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages and has won numerous awards, including the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from the Columbia Journalism School and Harvard’s Neiman Foundation for her nonfiction narrative, Accountable, the 2023 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Award for her short story, The Jeanines of Summer, and the 2018 Wanda Gág Read Aloud Award for her picture book, Escargot. Dashka’s bestselling true crime narrative, The 57 Bus, has received dozens of accolades, including the 2018 Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association, the 2018 Beatty Award from the California Library Association, the California Book Award Gold Award for Young Adult Literature, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. In 2021, The 57 Bus was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.