Deirdre H. McMahon, English and Philosophy, Drexel University (Ph.D., University of Iowa). My teaching and scholarship address 19th-century British literature and culture, postcolonial studies, and global children’s and young adult literature. My publications have appeared in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (Gale), Studies in the Novel, Academe, and KronoScope as well as in scholarly collections, including The Objects and Textures of Everyday Life in Imperial Britain (Ashgate, 2016), which I co-edited. I have presented and organized panels at international conferences (Modern Language Association; Postcolonial Studies Association; Children’s Literature Association) on translation politics and children’s publishing. A long-standing member of ChLA, I was honored to serve on and then chair the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Committee (2012-2018), which draws attention to children’s authors from around the world and to literacy as a human right. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to ChLA’s initiatives in international research and scholarly collaboration.

Dr. Bornali Nath Dowerah is Assistant Professor of English at Manohari Devi Kanoi Girls’ College, Dibrugarh, affiliated to Dibrugarh University, State of Assam, India. She teaches courses in American literature, British literature, Indian English and Indian Classical literature, Graphic narratives, Literary Theory, Partition literature and Communicative Skills. She received her B.A. in English Honours from Duliajan Girls’ College and M. A. in English from Dibrugarh University. She is EAP (English for Academic Purposes) trained faculty from University of Leicester in 2018. She did her M. Phil. in the field of Children’s literature and Ph. D. in Queer Young Adult American fiction from Dibrugarh University. Her M. Phil. research examined the Fantasy- Reality Syndrome in the context of magical realism in Salman Rushdie’s children’s fiction. In her Ph. D. she investigated upon the representation of queer narrators/characters as depicted by the American YA writers—David Levithan and Julie Anne Peters—with focus on identity formation and identity crisis in the character development process and narrative techniques. She attempted to analyze the texts through the methodologies of Psychoanalysis and Identity theory. Her first book Critical Perspectives (2018) is a corpus of critical readings in fiction and non-fiction texts. Besides, she has penned three books of poems--Crossroads (2019), Kobitaar Xoraai (2019), Rāmdhenu (2021). She has authored a collection of short stories for young readers titled Coffee Table Tales (2021) and a picture book for children with illustrations by Anusuya Borah titled Tiny Tales (2021). Her recent book is Route To Creative Writing (2022) meant for young writers. Besides, she has published numerous research articles in journals, newspapers, and edited books.

Samira Abdur-Rahman is Assistant Professor of Literature and the Environment at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). She holds a PhD in English from Rutgers University. She completed her BA in English Literature and Africana Studies at Rutgers University and an MA in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University. Previous to joining USF, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Frederick Douglass Institute at the University of Rochester. Her teaching and research interests include: African American Literature; childhood studies; autobiography studies; literary geography; and African Diaspora travel writing. Her working manuscript, Sites of Instruction: Black Childhood and the Geography of Education, explores the construction and performance of black childhood from the post-bellum period to twentieth century works of civil rights fiction and memoir. Reading across generic boundaries, the manuscript examines black writers' preoccupation with childhood and narratives of education as a means to map ulterior imaginings of place, self and futurity.

Maria Truglio received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and Ph.D. from Yale University. She is Professor of Italian and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State (University Park). Her research investigates Italian literature from the nineteenth century to the present day with attention to questions of gender and national identity formation. She focuses on the field of children’s literature, bringing psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, and postcolonial methodologies to bear on texts written for young people from the unification period forward. Her first book, Beyond the Family Romance: The Legend of Pascoli (U of Toronto P, 2007) examined the works of the canonical Symbolist poet Giovanni Pascoli through a psychoanalytic lens, with attention to his conception of childhood. Her monograph Italian Children’s Literature and National Identity: Childhood, Melancholy, Modernity (Routledge, 2017) analyzed books for young readers in the period between unification and fascism (1861-1922). With Nicolás Fernández-Medina she co-edited the volume Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in Spain and Italy (Routledge, 2016), which includes her discussion of Massimo Bontempelli's 1922 magical realist children's book. She is now researching how contemporary Italian children’s literature ascribes meanings to the “Mediterranean migration crisis” in light of Italy’s postcolonial context, and contributed an essay on this topic to the Children's Literature Association Quarterly special issue on refugees.

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is Professor of Youth Literature and Culture at the University of Glasgow, researching and teaching children’s and young adult literature and book culture. Melanie’s work explores how young people’s identities shape their reading and writing, and how literature fosters belonging, self-expression, agency, and social change. Melanie focuses on underrepresented voices, examining how writers and readers navigate marginalisation and how storytelling challenges norms and builds community.

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold has published five books, including Inclusive Young Adult Fiction (Palgrave, 2019), YA Anthologies: Amplifying Voices, Building Community (CUP, 2024), and International Bestsellers and the Online Reconfiguring of National Identity (CUP, 2024). A forthcoming book, Please Look After This Bear: How Paddington Became British (OUP, 2026, with Aishwarya Subramanian), explores immigration, identity, and national culture through Paddington Bear.

Beyond academia, Melanie champions inclusive youth literature through advisory roles with the CLPE Reflecting Realities project, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Awards, and other initiatives. Melanie also works with schools, publishers, and cultural organisations to support inclusive practices and empower young people’s creativity.

Chengcheng You is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau. Her articles can be found in A&HCI journals, such as Children’s Literature in Education, Neohelicon, Animation, The Lion and the Unicorn, International Research in Children’s Literature, and English Studies. She has also contributed six book chapters to various edited volumes, such as Representing Childhood and Atrocity (SUNY, 2022). Chengcheng is also the co-author of the monograph Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism: Children, Animals, and Poetry (Routledge, 2022). Her research primarily explores the interdisciplinary aspects of children’s literature, such as anthropomorphism, environmental ethics, translation studies, and adaptation studies. Her work also extends to comparative literature and culture, with a special emphasis on Chinese children’s literature and its cultural specificities within the global context of the genre.

Tharini Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at The University of South Carolina. Her research and teaching interests are informed by the questions surrounding agency as evidenced by her work on the agency of feminine characters and characters of color in young adult novels, of creators, readers, and characters in picture books, and of students and their instructors in the children’s literature classroom. Her research has been published in a number of edited collections and international journals including South Asia, The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, The ALAN Review, Papers, and Jeunesse. Tharini is currently working on a book project, The Discursive Material: Social and Embodied Constructions of Femininity in Speculative Young Adult Fiction, which examines how feminine adolescent characters’ access to language and acceptance of their own unique embodiments serves to empower them. Tharini also enjoys working on television shows, Disney films, and other visual media for young audiences.

Ngozi Onuora is the chair of the Teaching, Learning, and Foundations Department in the College of Education at Eastern Illinois University. Prior to this role she taught literacy courses in early childhood and elementary education such as children s literature and reading methods at Millikin University. Her research interests focus on multicultural representation in children’s literature. Dr. Onuora earned an EdD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.