Cynthia Leitich Smith
Visiting Writer, MFA in WCYA
Ibi Zoboi
Visiting Writer
Profile
Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times-bestselling author of My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich (Penguin, 2019), her middle-grade debut, and the young adult novels Pride (HaperCollins, 2018) and American Street (HarperCollins, 2017), a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book, and co-author of Punching the Air (HarperCollins, 2020) with Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam. She is also the editor of Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America (HarperCollins, 2019).
Ibi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. As an educator, she is the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti. She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in New York City, Ibi now lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with her husband and their three children. You can find her online at www.ibizoboi.net.