2021 GLLI Translated YA Book Prize Committee

Dr. Catharine Bomhold is an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has been teaching graduate classes in children’s and young adult literature  for 17 years . She is the co-author of Twice Upon a Time: A Guide to Fractured, Altered, and Retold Folk and Fairy Tales (Libraries Unlimited, 2008) and Build It, Make It, Do It, Play It!: Subject Access to the Best How-To Guides for Children and Teens (Libraries Unlimited, 2014), as well as scholarly articles on information seeking. Her new book, Serving the Underserved: Populations and Strategies for Success will be published by ALA Editions in fall, 2022.

Abigail Hsu is the Young Adult librarian at the Morristown & Morris Township Library in New Jersey. She completed her undergraduate studies at The College of New Jersey, where she double majored in English Literature and Chinese Language and Culture Studies. She is currently pursuing a Master of Information at Rutgers University.

David Jacobson, chair, is a longtime journalist and veteran of the book publishing industry. An experienced Japanese translator as well, he is author of the children’s book, Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko. David has been a member of GLLI since late 2017, and is currently working to add German and Hebrew to his linguistic toolbox. 

Karen Jensen is a Collection Development Librarian at Fort Worth Public Library specializing in youth fiction. She spent the first 25 years of her career in libraries as a Teen Services/Young Adult Librarian. She is the creator and administrator of Teen Librarian Toolbox, a School Library Journal networked blog. Here she talks about all things teen librarianship, including books. She is also the editor and author of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth and published by ALA. She has written several articles and hosted several webinars and is an advocate for doing collection diversity audits. She currently resides in the state of Texas with her husband, two daughters, and a cute wiener dog.

Dr. Lynn E. Palermo, a French professor at Susquehanna University, received a 2018 NEA Translation Fellowship to support her translation of Humus, by Fabienne Kanor (to appear in the UVA Press CARAF Series), and a French Voices Award for her co-translation of Cyrille Fleischman’s Destiny’s Repairman. Her translations have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Exchanges Literary Journal, and World Literature Today.

Karen Van Drie is Executive Director of Global Literature in Libraries Initiative. She has been a board member of GLLI since 2016 and GLLI blog managing editor since 2019. She is an American expat librarian working in Istanbul, Turkey. She is on Twitter at @worldlibraries. 

Sujei Lugo Vázquez is a former school librarian at the University of Puerto Rico Elementary School and currently works as a children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library, Connolly Branch. She is a doctoral candidate in Library and Information Science at Simmons College, focusing her research on race and collection development in children’s librarianship. She is an active member of REFORMA (The National Association to Promote Library Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking) and the Association of Library Service to Children. Sujei is also a book reviewer, sensitivity reader, and organizer. 

Rachel Wang Yung-Hsin is a native Mandarin speaker and self-identified serial migrant. She lived in Asia for four decades and was active in education, intercultural communications, interpretation, translation, and visual art. After returning to the USA, she pursued an MFA in Writing for Children at Simmons University and won the Lee & Low and Friends Scholarship in 2017. She is a children/teen book reviewer for Kirkus.