Meet Authors Ari Tison and Jonathan Hillman

For Children’s Book Week, Ari and Jon will read and talk a little bit about writing for young people & what books do!

Ari Tison is a Bribri (Indigenous Costa Rican) poet and author. Her debut YA hybrid prose and poetry novel “SAINTS OF THE HOUSEHOLD” was released March 28th, 2023 and has already received three starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and BCCB and was selected as a JLG Gold Standard Selection. Ari grew up in Minneapolis and took classes in the Loft’s program as a teenager and young adult and received her MFAC from Hamline. She now teaches at Hamline’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults and serves as the coordinator for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s mentorship program. You can also find her poetry and short works at POETRY, Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, Rock & Sling and OUR SHADOWS HAVE CLAWS anthology with Algonquin and forthcoming RELIT with HarperCollins.

Jonathan Hillman is a graduate of Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program, where he won the Walden Pond Press Award for Excellence in Middle Grade Fiction. His work has been featured in Fat and Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives. His debut picture book “Big Wig” is out now, and his second picture book “The Wishing Machine” is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in Fall 2023. He lives near Minneapolis, MN with his two cats.