2024 Swiacki Children's Literature Festival

The 2024 Swiacki Children's Literature Festival will feature award-winning author Ibi Zoboi & author/illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh.

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Public Schedule of Events

All Events Occur in the McCarthy Center
3 - 5 pm: Registration (McCarthy Student Center Concourse)
3- 7 pm: Exhibit, Duncan Tonatiuh: Codices, Past and Present (Mazmanian Gallery)
3 - 7 pm: Book Sales (1839 Room)
3:30 - 5 pm: Book Signing (Mazmanian Gallery)
4:30 - 6 pm: Pat Keogh Memorial Workshop:  "What's New in Children's Literature" with Samantha Westall & Laura Hudock (Alumni Room)
6-8:30 pm: Buffet Dinner and The Mary Burns Memorial Lectures: Duncan Tonatiuh and Ibi Zoboi (Dining Annex)

About the Speakers

Ibi Zoboi 

Ibi Zoboi was born in Haiti. When she was four, she immigrated to New York with her mother. Zoboi is the author of numerous titles including: S(k)in (2025); American Street (2017), which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in Young Adult’s Literature, a Time Magazine Best YA Book Of All Time, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year; Pride (2018), a contemporary remix of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; and My Life As An Ice Cream Sandwich (2020), a moving middle-grade debut of a girl finding her place in a world that’s changing at warp speed.

Zoboi is also the co-author of the Walter Award and L.A. Times Book Prize-winning Punching the Air (2021) with prison reform activist Dr. Yusef Salaam, an Exonerated Five member, which was also shortlisted for the U.K.’s Yoto Carnegie Medal. She is the editor of Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America (2020), an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and Black in America. Her debut picture book, The People Remember (2021), received a Coretta Scott King Book Honor Award. Her other recent titles include Okoye to the People: A Black Panther Novel (2022) for Marvel; Star Child (2023), an illumination of the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose; and the novel Nigeria Jones (2023), which won the 2024 Coretta Scott King Book Award.

Zoboi has appeared on CBS This Morning and The Reid Out alongside Yusef Salaam, and on PBS’s Book View Now. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others.

Author Website

Duncan Tonatiuh

Duncan Tonatiuh (toh-nah-tee-YOU) is an award-winning author-illustrator. He is both Mexican and American. He grew up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and graduated from Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College in New York City. His artwork is inspired by Pre-Columbian art, particularly that of the Mixtec codices. His aim is to create images and stories that honor the past, but that are relevant to people, specially children, nowadays.

Author Website

Festival History

The Swiacki Children's Literature Festival at Framingham State University is an annual celebration of children's books featuring renowned authors and illustrators in the field. The event includes book signings, lectures and workshops sharing the latest developments in the craft. The event launched in 1986 as the David McCord Children's Literature Festival, sponsored by the Nobscot Reading Council. Framingham State has hosted the festival since its inception and began coordinating the event in 2006.

In 2014, the festival was renamed the Swiacki Children's Literature Festival at Framingham State University in recognition of the efforts and support of alumnae donors, Nancy and Janina Swiacki.

Past Featured Authors and Artists

2023: Ekua Holmes and Dashka Slater
2022: Raul the Third and Erin Entrada Kelly
2021: Sophie Blackall and Javaka Steptoe with Special Guest: Kate DiCamillo
2020: Joseph Bruchac and Melissa Sweet
2019: Nikki Grimes and David Wiesner
2018: Matt De La Pena and Wendell Minor
2017: Andrea Pinkney and Brian Pinkney
2016: Jason Chin and Steve Sheinkin
2015: Jane Yolen
2014: Steve Jenkins and Mark Teague
2013: Beth Krommes and Stephen Krensky
2012: Jerry Pinkney and Joyce Sidman
2011: Jeanne Birdsall
2010: Grace Lin, Leda Schubert, Jimmy Gownley and Nick Abadzis
2009: Molly Bang
2008: Barbara Lehman
2007: Steven Kellogg
2006: John Lechner & Gordon Morrison