The Centre for Post Colonial Studies is pleased to partner with the British Foundation for the University of the West Indies  and Future Think (www.futurethink.info) to  host  ‘Black Books Matter:  making mirrors for our youth’  with award-winning children’s author, Zetta Elliott.   

How do we move children’s fantasy fiction beyond wands and wizards? In this interactive presentation, author/educator Zetta Elliott will discuss “the trouble with magic” before showing participants how to draw on their personal history to create a sankofa postcard.  

This workshop will focus on the importance of books with diverse characters and provides an insight into the creative writing process. Zetta will discuss why she writes books with multicultural characters and where she gains inspiration for her books.  Zetta discusses the role that books place in our culture as mirrors, windows and doors. This workshop will be suitable for  students aged 14 and over, parents and teachers.

After spending her childhood consuming British fantasy fiction, Elliott began to decolonize her imagination and dedicated her writing life to reconstituting “Black magic” in fiction as a powerful force to be celebrated rather than defeated. Elliott is also an advocate for community-based publishing and will share how print-on-demand technology transfers power from the industry’s gatekeepers to those excluded from the publishing process. 

Born in Canada (her father is from Nevis), Zetta Elliott moved to the US in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American Studies at NYU. Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, and her plays have been staged in New York and Chicago. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. She is the author of over twenty-five books for young readers, including the award-winning picture book Bird. Her urban fantasy novel, Ship of Souls, was named a Booklist Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Title for Youth; her latest YA novel, The Door at the Crossroads, was a finalist in the Speculative Fiction category of the 2017 Cybils Awards, and her latest picture book, Melena’s Jubilee, won a 2017 Skipping Stone Award. Three books published under her own imprint, Rosetta Press, have been named Best Children's Books of the Year by the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature. Rosetta Press generates culturally relevant stories that center children who have been marginalized, misrepresented, and/or rendered invisible in traditional children’s literature. Elliott is an advocate for greater diversity and equity in publishing. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Learn more atzettaelliott.com