Children's Book World

Katherine Locke and Nicole Melleby will be at Children’s Book World on May 13th at 7pm with Vincent Tirado and Eric J. Brown!

Children’s Book World is so excited to celebrate the launch of Katherine Locke and Nicole Melleby’s new anthology, ATHLETE IS AGENDER: True Stories of LGBTQ+ People in Sports. This new book is a nonfiction middle grade anthology featuring both famous athletes (Adam Rippon! Karina Manta! Cece Telfer!) and kidlit authors, including several Philly area folks like Erik J. Brown and Vincent Tirado. It was already selected for Junior Library Guild and just received a glowing Kirkus review as well as a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. We hope you can come out on May 13th at 7:00pm and celebrate with us.

About ATHLETE IS AGENDER

Athlete is agender. Athlete can mean anyone.

* ‘This affirming sports assemblage’ (PW, starred review) revels in the achievements of strong, passionate, and determined LGBTQ+ athletes across every age, level, and field of sports.

Find your strength in: 

Adam Rippon’s unbelievable journey from figure-skating Olympic alternate to the first openly gay Olympic medalist in his sport; CeCé Telfer’s career as a trans track star and her unwavering commitment to run for the future freedom of trans athletes; em dickson’s relationship to eir gender identity and how sailing, a sport that doesn’t categorize athletes by gender, helped em embrace eir power and identity, and many other invaluable true stories. Featuring testimonies by world-class athletes and award-winning children’s book authors, as well as profiles on culture-defining figures like Megan Rapinoe and Billie Jean King, Athlete Is Agender is a lifesaving book not to be missed. 

This book is for:

• LGBTQIA+ kids, teens, tweens, and adults
• Athletes and sports fans
• Readers looking to learn more about the LGBTQIA+ community
• Parents of gay kids and other LGBTQIA+ youth
• Educators looking for advice about the LGBTQIA+ community

Katherine Locke lives and writes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with their feisty felines. They are the award-winning author of many books for kids and teens, including Gender Rebels and What Are Your Words?; they are also the co-editor and contributor of This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them and Us. They can be found online at KatherineLockeBooks.com and @bibliogato on X and Instagram.

Nicole Melleby, a Jersey native, is the author of highly praised middle-grade books, including the Lambda Literary finalist Hurricane Season and ALA Notable Children’s book How to Become a Planet. She is currently on the faculty of the Hamline University MFA for Writing for Children and Young Adults, and lives with her wife and their cats, whose needs for attention oddly align with Nicole’s writing schedule.

Vincent Tirado is a non-binary Afro-Latine born and raised in the Bronx. Their first novel, Burn Down, Rise Up (2022) was recognized with the Pura Belpré Award, and is a Bram Stoker and Lambda Literary award finalist. Since then, they’ve written We Don’t Swim Here (2023) and a short story in the anthology, The Black Girl Survives in This One (2024). Their latest novel, We Came to Welcome You (2024) is now available to order. When they’re not writing new spine-chilling horrors, they can be found making another pot of coffee and harassing their cat, Bugsy.

Erik J. Brown is the internationally-bestselling author of All That’s Left in the World and the sequel The Only Light Left Burning.

His books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, The Bulletin of the Center of Children’s Books, and ALA Booklist.

His second novel, Lose You to Find Me, became a USA Today Bestseller.

Erik is also the co-host of the YA Book Podcast YA-OK where he and Alyssa Ljub of Netflix’s The Circle talk with new and established YA authors about writing, publishing, and all things YA!

He lives in Philadelphia with his family.

You can find him on Instagram @ErikJB and TikTok @ErikJBrown