Board of Advisors
(in alphabetical order)

Cindy Bagby – At fifteen, Ms. Bagby began working in her school library, and she has continued in that profession since. Today, she is Lower School librarian at Trevor Day School, a position she has held for twelve years.

Orville Lawrence Bell – An English instructor at Harvey Milk High School, Mr. Bell is a member of the founding faculty at that school. Before joining Harvey Milk, he worked as an English literature instructor and a dramatic artist at the University of Ghana, the University of Maryland, and Montgomery County Public Schools.

Colin Bootman – A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Mr. Bootman has illustrated many children's books, textbooks, periodicals, and book covers. His work has received several prizes, including a Schneider Family Book Award of the American Library Association and a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. Mr. Bootman was born in Trinidad and at the age of seven moved to New York City, where he currently resides.

Christine V. Fleming – A mother of three, Ms. Fleming has devoted the past fourteen years to a variety of initiatives in education. She served for a decade on the Chelsea Day School Board of Directors, including eight years as president. As co-chair of the Parent Association Literary Committee at Little Red School House Elisabeth Irwin High School, she helped organize book weeks and author visits to every classroom. She has also worked in production for Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

E. R. Frank – In addition to her professional career as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, Ms. Frank is also an author of young adult literature. Her first novel, Life Is Funny, won the Teen People Book Club NEXT Award for Young Adult Fiction and was a top-ten American Library Association 2001 Quick Pick. Ms. Frank's other novels are America, Friction, and Wrecked.

Sarah King - For three years, Sarah King taught 9th and 11th grade English and 10th grade writing at Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change in Central Harlem as a Teach For America corps member.  There, she worked with Behind the Book to bring authors to her classroom.  She recently joined the Teach For America - New York City staff as a program director.  In this position, she supports first and second year teachers and their work in the classroom.

Pat Levenson – Ms. Levenson was a special education teacher in the New York City public schools for thirty-two years. For many of those years, she also served as an elected United Federation of Teachers representative. Since retirement in 2005, Ms. Levenson has worked as a special education teacher and program development specialist at a Brooklyn public school.

Annmarie McLeoud – For nearly twenty years, Ms. McLeoud has been an educator in Bedford-Stuyvesant's public schools. During that time, she served for two years as a District Mentor assisting new teachers. Ms. McLeoud is currently a librarian at Community School 21 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

James Meader - Mr. Meader studied literature and Chinese at Middlebury College before moving to New York and joining the publicity department at Picador, where he is publicity manager. Picador, the literary paperback imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers, publishes paperbacks from Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt & Co., and St. Martin's Press, in addition to trade paperback originals. Picador authors of fiction and nonfiction include Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Thomas L. Friedman, Marilynne Robinson, and Anthony Shadid; National Book Award winners Jonathan Franzen, Shirley Hazzard, Richard Powers, and Susan Sontag; Nobel Prize winners Heinrich Bï¿∏ll, Herman Hesse, and Amartya Sen; and National Book Critics Circle Award winners Jim Crace and Philip Gourevitch. Picador˙s bestselling authors include Paul Auster, Augusten Burroughs, Anita Diamant, Joseph Kanon, Lorrie Moore, Salman Rushdie, and Tom Wolfe.

Raymond Stefan Pultinas – For more than sixteen years, Mr. Pultinas has taught American Literature and Literary Criticism at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Since 1996, he has also taught in the English Education Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. Mr. Pultinas is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation in Education on constructing his high school English classroom as a "public space." His goal is to create the Baldwin Center, named after one of DeWitt Clinton's most celebrated alumni and serving as a place for inquiry, research, and the dissemination of young peoples' opinions in publications and public forums.

Ernesto Quiñonez – With the publication of his first novel, Bodega Dreams, the Village Voice distinguished Mr. Quiñonez as a Writer on the Verge. Barnes & Noble chose Bodega Dreams for the Discover Great New Writers series, and Borders selected it for the Original Voices series. The Los Angeles Times also named Bodega Dreams a Notable Book of the Year. Raised in Spanish Harlem, Mr. Quiñonez studied writing at the City College of New York and taught fourth grade in a Bronx public school for several years before leaving to become a full-time writer. His latest book is Chango's Fire.

Brian O. Selznick – An illustrator of numerous children's books, Mr. Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Award for The Invention of Hugo Cabret and a 2002 Caldecott Honor for The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. Other books he has illustrated include Frindle, The Doll People, and A Week in the Woods. Mr. Selznick has also authored two children’s books, The Houdini Box and Boy of a Thousand Faces.

Ned Vizzini – At the age of fifteen, Mr. Vizzini began writing for New York Press. At seventeen, he was asked to write a piece for the New York Times Magazine, which led to the publication Teen Angst? Naaah.... when he was nineteen. Judy Blume chose his next book, Be More Chill, as a Today Show Book Club selection. Now 24, Mr. Vizzini’s latest book, It's Kind of a Funny Story, was published in spring 2006.

Rita Williams-Garcia - Rita Williams-Garcia is the author of six distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies, Fast Talk on a Slow Track, Blue Tights, and Like Sisters on the Home Front. She has also published a picture book and has contributed short stories to numerous anthologies. Williams-Garcia's works have been recognized by the Coretta Scott King Award Committee, the Bologna Book Fair, the PEN/Norma Klein Award, the American Library Association, and Parents' Choice, among others. She has served on the National Book Award Committee for Young People's Literature and is on faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts for the MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults program.




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