AFT Book Club: A Conversation with Dashka Slater

Dashka Slater

Author and Journalist

New York Times-bestselling author Dashka Slater has been described as a “triple threat” for her success in journalism, adult fiction, and children’s literature. The 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.

Her children’s picture books include the beloved Escargot series, Dangerously Ever After, Wild Blue, and The Antlered Ship. She is also the author of a middle grade fantasy series, The Feylawn Chronicles.

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. A Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Dashka is a frequent speaker at schools, conferences, colleges, and universities. She lives in Oakland, California and teaches at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.