News/Events
Events
2027
July 24-28
International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) 2027 biennial congress (São Paulo, Brazil)
2026
November (last weekend)
Launch party with Paul Lai for Asian Americans in Story (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA)
November 6-10
Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) 2026 annual meeting (Bangkok, Thailand)
October 8-9
Minnesota Library Association (MLA) annual conference (virtual)
October 7
Kirkus Prize ceremony (New York, New York, USA)
September 24-26
Youth Literature Festival University of Illinois College of Education (Champaign, Illinois, USA)
August 10-13
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) 2026 World Library and Information Congress (Busan and Seoul, Republic of Korea)
June 25-26
The Sixth International Children’s Literature Conference (Antwerp, Belgium)
May 28-30
Children’s Literature Association (ChLA) annual conference (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA)
March 1
mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, Illinois, USA)
February 27-28
The Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature (Oklahoma State University, St. Norbert College, and Aquinas College – virtual)
February 25
Engaged Citizenship Common Experience Speaker Series University of Illinois Springfield (Springfield, Illinois, USA)
2025
November 15
Picturebooks in and Across Asia in the 21st Century (Hong Kong Shue Yan University – virtual)
November 12-14
Mothers, Motherhood, and Mothering in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (University of Münster – virtual)
November 5
Illinois iSchool Research Showcase (Urbana, Illinois, USA)
September 26
Illinois Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies (Champaign, Illinois, USA)
August 30-31
IBBY Asia Pacific Regional Conference (Suwon, Republic of Korea)
June 21-25
International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) biennial congress (Salamanca, Spain)
June 9-14
Children’s Literature Association (ChLA) annual conference (virtual)
News
2026. Asian Americans in Story: Context, Collections, and Community Engagement with Children’s and Young Adult Literature by Paul Lai and me, is available for pre-order!
2026 April 3. The news is out!! I am serving as a juror for the Kirkus Prize Young Readers’ Literature category!
2026 February. I was recognized as a honorable mention recipient for the University of Illinois Career Influencer Award.
2025 June. I was elected to the board of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature.
2024 May 15. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and I announced a call for papers for a new co-edited anthology, Anne for Everyone: Green Gables, Children of Color, and Global Childhoods, under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.
2024 April 3. Publishers Marketplace announced that award-winning poet Sun Yung Shin and I are adapting Catherine Ceniza Choy’s Asian American Histories of the United States (Beacon Press, 2022) for young readers.
2024 March 27. Patricia Enciso, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and I signed a contract with Routledge to co-edit the Handbook of Research on Diversity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.
2023 Nov 15. I served as a judge on the National Book Awards Young People’s Literature jury. See the National Book Foundation announcement for the 2023 National Book Award winners!