Megaphone Board
The Megaphone Board is a non-governing advisory group made up of influential and mission-aligned individuals in the publishing world who can attest to the importance of elevating underheard voices. By forming the Megaphone Board, these authors serve as the honorary head of the Shout Mouse “Megaphones.” These acclaimed authors will lend their support through sharing Shout Mouse’s work with their audiences, writing forewords for forthcoming books, and engaging with youth authors.
José Olivarez
2024 - Present
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, and the author of two collections of poems, including, most recently, Promises of Gold—which was long listed for the 2023 National Book Awards. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. Along with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. Alongside Antonio Salazar, he published the hybrid book, Por Siempre in 2023. He lives in Jersey City, NJ.
Roseanne A. Brown
2024 - Present
Roseanne A. Brown is an immigrant from the West African nation of Ghana and a graduate of the University of Maryland, where she completed the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her debut novel A Song of Wraiths and Ruin was an instant New York Times Bestseller, an Indie Bestseller, and received six starred reviews. Her newest novel, Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting, came out Fall 2022 with Rick Riordan Presents. She has worked with Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney among other publishers. You can visit her online at roseanneabrown.com or on Instagram or Threads at @rosiesrambles.
Ebony LaDelle
2024 - Present
Ebony is a proud Howard alum and the author of Love Radio—which was People magazine’s best book of the summer, a 2023 Audie Award Finalist, a 2023 Michigan Notable Book, Apple Books’ best book of 2022, an Amazon's Editor Pick and was featured on the Today Show. Prior to being an author, Ebony was a brand marketing director in book publishing and worked at Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, among others. You can visit her online at www.ebonyladelle.com and follow her on social at @ebonyladelle.
Jason Reynolds
2020 - Present
Jason Reynolds is an award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Jason’s many books include Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and Look Both Ways, which was a National Book Award Finalist. His latest book, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, is a collaboration with Ibram X. Kendi. Jason is the 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and CBS This Morning. He is on faculty at Lesley University, for the Writing for Young People MFA Program and lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com
Jason’s Picks
Hena Khan
2020 - Present
Hena Khan is a Pakistani American children’s author. Her debut middle grade novel Amina’s Voice was named a Best Book of 2017 by the Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, NPR, and others. She is the author of the Zayd Saleem Chasing the Dream series and More to the Story, a Little Women inspired novel. Hena has written several acclaimed picture books including Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns, Night of the Moon, It’s Ramadan Curious George, Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets and Under My Hijab. Her newest picture book is Like the Moon Loves the Sky. Hena lives in her hometown of Rockville, Maryland with her family. Learn more about Hena at henakhan.com.
Hena’s Picks
Jacqueline Woodson
2024 - Present
Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and is the recipient of a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She is the 2022 Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, which also received the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Year We Learned to Fly, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me; The Other Side; Each Kindness; Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. In 2018, she founded BALDWIN FOR THE ARTS (https://baldwinforthearts.org), a residency serving writers, composers, interdisciplinary, and visual artists of the Global Majority. Her most recent novel, Remember Us, is set in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Acevedo
2020 - Present
Elizabeth Acevedo is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High—which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist.
She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her love.
Liz’s Picks
Clint Smith
2020 - Present
Clint Smith is staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Clint has received fellowships from New America, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. His debut nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed, which explores how different historical sites reckon with—or fail to reckon with—their relationship to the history of slavery, will be published by Little, Brown in 2021. He received his B.A. from Davidson College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Clint’s Picks
Wendy Wan-Long Shang
2020 - Present
Wendy Wan-Long Shang is a middle-grade author who focuses on the many experiences of Chinese-Americans with humor, heart and a sense of history. Her most recent book, Not Your All-American Girl, was co-written with her friend, Madelyn Rosenberg, and examines Chinese/Jewish identity, the power of speaking up, and friendship in the 1980s. Her debut novel, The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, was described by Booklist as "captur[ing] the seemingly unbearable unfairness of being a tween balanced between two cultures. Lucy's struggles and frustrations are realistic, and her experiences take her from stubborn resistance to pride in her Chinese heritage." The Great Wall of Lucy Wu received several awards, including the Asian-Pacific American Librarians Association’s Children’s Literature Award for 2012 and a place on nine state reading lists. Wendy also works for a criminal justice non-profit, advocating for racial equity and community empowerment.
Wendy’s Picks
Meg Medina
2020 - 2024
Meg Medina is a Newberry award-winning and New York Times best-selling author who writes picture books, as well as middle grade and young adult fiction. Her works have been called “heartbreaking,” “lyrical” and “must haves for every collection.”
When she’s not writing, Meg works on community projects that support girls, Latinx youth, and/or literacy. She serves on the National Board of Advisors for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and is a faculty member of Hamline University’s Masters of Fine Arts in Children’s Literature. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
