Jamar Nicholas is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based artist and educator who uses visual storytelling to empower young people and spark empathy, creativity, and confidence. His work centers on themes of anti-bullying, healing, kindness, and the idea that everyone can be a hero.

He is the creator of Leon the Extraordinary, a graphic novel series published by Scholastic Graphix that follows Leon and his friends as they navigate friendship, identity, and resilience. Through art and narrative, Nicholas reflects the many voices, experiences, and perspectives that come together to form a richer American story.

Eleanor Spicer Rice is an award-winning author and entomologist whose work invites readers to see the natural world with fresh eyes. With a Ph.D. in entomology, she has spent years studying ants and the essential roles they play in shaping ecosystems.

She is the author of several books, including The Deadliest series, Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants, Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Spiders, and Ants: Workers of the World. Across her writing, Rice reveals how small, often overlooked lives connect to larger systems, reflecting the intricate patterns and perspectives that shape our shared American story.

Relaunched this year, Greensboro Bound’s High School Poet Laureate Program gives student writers the tools, mentorship, and platform to grow as poets and public voices. Led in partnership with Virginia Hunt, president of the Guilford Association of School Librarians, and Dr. Kendra N. Bryant Aya of NC A&T State University’s Creative Writing Program, participating students have engaged in intensive workshops focused on craft, revision, and performance.

Festival audiences will hear the results of their hard work on April 11, as this select group of emerging poets shares their work and Greensboro Bound names its first High School Poet Laureate.

Libby Buck is the author of Port Anna, her debut novel. Set along the rugged coast of Maine, the book explores family, memory, and the pull of place as characters confront long-buried truths and shifting identities.

Through its layered narrative and deeply rooted sense of landscape, Port Anna reflects the ways personal histories and changing communities come together to shape a broader American story.

Ben Yagoda is the author of Alias O. Henry, a novel that reimagines the life of O. Henry, the famed short story writer born in Greensboro. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing New York City, the book explores identity, reinvention, and the making of an American literary voice.

Yagoda is also the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books on writing and American culture, examining how language and place shape the American story.

Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives, a fundraising initiative that supports the Black Trans community. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, his work has appeared in New York Magazine, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus, among others. He currently teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

His debut novel, Great Black Hope, is a national bestseller and has been named a Best Book of the Year so far by Vogue, Amazon Books, and Debutiful. The novel follows a young queer Black man whose arrest exposes the fragile divide between race and class, privilege and vulnerability, offering a powerful portrait of a life shaped by intersecting identities, hidden histories, and the shifting realities of contemporary America.

Terah Shelton Harris is the author of One Summer in Savannah and Long After We Are Gone, and her third novel, Where the Wildflowers Grow, will be published in February 2026. A former librarian, she writes upmarket fiction known for its emotional depth and bittersweet endings.

Her books have been selected as a Target Book Club pick, LibraryReads pick, Kobo Best Book, and Together We Read title, and she was named Target’s first Author of the Year. Through stories rooted in family, history, and Southern life, Harris explores the ties that bind generations and the many perspectives that shape the American story.

Jade Song is a writer, filmmaker, and artist whose work moves fluidly across genres and forms. Their debut novel, Chlorine (William Morrow, 2023), was lauded as “visionary and disturbing,” selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, awarded the Alex Award and the Writer’s Center First Novel Prize, and translated into Italian, French, Mandarin Chinese, and other languages.

Their second novel, I Love You Don’t Die, will be published in March 2026, and their debut short story collection, Ox Ghost Snake Demon, is forthcoming in early 2027. Across fiction and film, Song’s work explores identity, obsession, and transformation, offering layered portraits of inner lives shaped by culture, desire, and the strange, shifting nature of contemporary experience.

Diya Abdo is the author of American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience and the Lincoln Financial Professor of English at Guilford College. A second-generation Palestinian refugee born and raised in Jordan, her scholarship explores Arab women writers and Arab and Islamic feminisms.

In 2015, she founded Every Campus A Refuge, a national initiative that has helped campuses across the country host and support more than 600 refugees in building new lives. An Ashoka Fellow and recipient of numerous national civic engagement awards, Abdo has presented her work at the White House and the United Nations. Through her writing, teaching, and advocacy, she expands our understanding of belonging, displacement, and what it means to shape the American story.

Bryan Christopher is the author of Stopping the Deportation Machine: One Immigrant Student’s Arrest and the Kids Who Took on Washington to Get Him Back. An English and journalism teacher at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, he also advises the school’s bilingual student newspaper, The Pirates’ Hook.

His work reflects the power of young people to shape the American story in real time.

Imani Perry is a National Book Award winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow whose work explores the deeply complex history of Black thought, art, and imagination. Her latest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, traces the color blue across time and experience, from indigo fields to the music of Louis Armstrong, revealing how art, history, and culture intertwine. Through this layered exploration, Perry captures a portrait of America shaped by memory, creativity, and resilience, reflecting the many perspectives that form our American Kaleidoscope.

We are proud to partner with UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum to bring Dr. Perry to the Greensboro Bound Book Festival. 

Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist and New York Times-bestselling author known for her powerful reporting on outsiders, underdogs, and the communities that shape them. Her books include Factory Man, Dopesick, and Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. Dopesick was adapted into a Peabody and Emmy Award winning Hulu series, for which Macy served as an executive producer and co-writer.

Her most recent book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, blends personal history with cultural reporting to examine the rural urban divide, political polarization, and the erosion of local journalism. It was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and selected as President Barack Obama’s favorite book of the year for 2025. Through intimate storytelling and investigative depth, Macy reveals the intersecting forces that define modern America.

Silas House is a New York Times-bestselling author whose work is rooted in place, identity, and the evolving story of the American South. He is the author of eight novels, including Southernmost and Lark Ascending, and his first book of poetry, All These Ghosts, was released in 2025. He served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2023 to 2025. He was the executive producer of the documentary Hillbilly, winner of the LA Film Festival’s Documentary Prize and the Foreign Press Association’s Media Award. In 2023, he served as writer, co-producer, and creative director of the Tyler Childers video “In Your Love,” earning nominations from the Grammys, the Academy of Country Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the Country Music Television Awards. He teaches at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.

Across fiction, poetry, and film, House’s storytelling reflects lives often overlooked and voices shaped by community, land, and change. His work captures an America defined not by a single narrative, but by many lived experiences.

Dr. Warren Zanes is a New York Times bestselling author, musician, and Grammy-nominated documentary producer whose work explores the cultural power of American music and storytelling. He teaches at NYU, and his writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Oxford American, and more.

His books include Dusty in Memphis, Petty: The Biography, and Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, which was adapted into a feature film. Across music, film, and writing, Zanes captures the voices, influences, and creative forces that come together to shape America’s artistic landscape.

10:00 -11:15 AM | Cassie Bustamante & David Bailey | That’s My Story

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM | Billy Ingram | Writing as a Second or Third Act

1:30-2:45 PM | Jim Dodson | The Art of the Research Interview