Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson explores the themes of loneliness and trauma as a young Native American boy named Sequoyah experiences life in the foster care system. This 2018 National Book Award Finalist is about a broken teenager’s search for his identity and the hardships of being displaced. Sequoyah lives his life always keeping his feelings buried, until he is placed with the Troutt family. There he meets Rosemary, a friend and confidant who, like him, is a Native American child living in the foster care system.

Tara Westover speaks to students and teachers at the Academy of American Studies in Long island City, NY, about her memoir, EDUCATED.

I was born in Cameroon and moved to the United States after high school to attend college. Having never been that far from home, I was extremely homesick in my first months in the country (it didn’t help that the weather was too cold for my liking). That all changed when I arrived at college.

by DONNA GEPHART, author of Lily and Dunkin (Delacorte Press, May 2016)   I’m not going to sugarcoat this. The statistic is grim and the stories behind it heartbreaking. Forty-three percent of transgender young people try to kill themselves. Why? Here’s one story: Because her parents isolated her from supportive friends and adults, refused to accept

By Wayne Maines, father of Nicole Maines.  The Maines family is the focus of Amy Ellis Nutt’s Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (Random House, October 2015) Recently I had the opportunity to speak at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. Before the lecture I spent an hour walking around their beautiful campus, thinking