Villa discusses the process of getting into character to write and “understanding how they see their world” #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Kemp discusses her book Desert Song and how the songs pay tribute to the Texas environment and her ancestors, guided by her own creative processes. #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Panelists discuss their methods for planning their novels. Villa takes the approach of getting everything onto the page and sculpting the project out of the draft. Lee says she enjoys planning out her works to build on the scaffolding. Kemp says her process is guided by random bursts of inspiration

Villa, still talking about his experiences that made Canto Contigo, describes his experience with perfectionism and how that perfectionism appears in main character Rafie Álvarez #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Villa describes his novel Canto Contigo, about community, music, and a sense of place. The book features a queer main character and describes the experience of readers expressing their excitement about the representation. #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Correction, sorry: books. They love several books.

Kemp cites The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as a major inspiration as the first time she’d read a Latina main character in YA fiction, describing how important the representation was to her #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Correction, sorry: Children’s Literature Award Winners panel, moderated by Christ Barton #TexasBookFestival #TILChildrensLiteratureAwards

Authors and panelists, Laekan Zea Kemp, author of Desert Song, Jonny Garza Villa, author of Canto Contigo, Lyla Lee, author of Gigi Shin is not a nerd, discuss their childhood experiences and what brought them to love book #TexasBookFestival #TILYouthLiteratureAwards

Under a white tent, curtains have opened on the Texas Institute of Letters 2025 Children Literature Awards.

:)