Katie Day – Committee Chair – is an international school teacher-librarian in Singapore.  An American expatriate for over 37 years, she has an undergraduate degree in Russian civilization, a master’s degree in children’s literature from the UK, and teaching and master of library and information science degrees via Australia. Currently president of the Singapore International School Librarian Network, she has been heavily involved in the development and management of the Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore and the Siam Book Awards in Thailand, as well as the Neev Book Award in India. Katie has also lived in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and the UK, and was a month-long guest curator on the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative blog for the UN #SDGLitMonth in March 2021 and for #IndiaKidLitMonth in September 2022. Twitter: @librarianedge

Angela Erickson – Committee Member – is a former head of Middle School English who currently works as the Head of Libraries at United World College in Singapore. She is interested in how educational leadership, curriculum design and workshop pedagogy can be integrated to create a school culture of reading, thinking and writing. For the past few years, she has been working to create systems to articulate classroom and departmental libraries with the central school libraries to support the needs of all readers. She currently teaches one section of “The Imperfect Art of Living” for the Innovation Academy Online. When she is not reading, Angie enjoys teaching yoga, thru-hiking, and playing the cello badly (to the consternation of her next-door neighbors).

Gillian Esquivia-Cohen – Committee Member – is a dual citizen of the US and Colombia, and a writer and translator who received her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing in English has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Guernica, The Kenyon Review Online, and Latin American Literature Today, and in Spanish in Polis Poesía, where she is a contributing editor. Her translations of books, academic articles, and literary fiction have been published by university presses, peer-reviewed journals, and literary magazines such as The Arkansas International. A recipient of a Writer Fellowship from the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, her work has recently been longlisted for the First Pages Prize and received support from Tin House, Monson Arts, Writing By Writers, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She lives between Bogotá and Alabama, where she teaches writing. (Photo by Jay Graham)

Larissa Helena – Committee Member – is an editor, rights consultant, and translator. She has translated numerous titles into Portuguese and English, including Where We Go from Here by Lucas Rocha, Here the Whole Time by Vitor Martins, and This is Our Place, also by Vitor Martins. All of her translations were winners of previous Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize. Larissa also leads the North America catalog expansion of beloved screen-free audio player Yoto, bringing favorite brands like Chronicles of Narnia, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Dragons Love Tacos and Sesame Street to the platform – as well as many stories from around the world, like Temple Alley Summer, Too Small Tola, and Sulwe. Twitter: @larilena

Terry Hong – Committee Member – currently reviews books for various publications including Booklist, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, and Christian Science Monitor. She created BookDragon, an extensive book blog originally for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where she was media arts consultant for eight years. She was an inaugural advisor and writer wrangler for Girl Rising, a global action campaign highlighting girls’ education. She taught for two years in Duke University’s Leadership in the Arts, a New York City-based performance and public policy program. She co-authored two books, Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture from Astro Boy to Zen Buddhism and What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature. She’s served/chaired various award committees, including USBBY’s Outstanding International Books, Hans Christian Andersen Award U.S. nominations, We Need Diverse Books’ Walter Awards, and the Audies. She holds literature degrees from Dartmouth College and Yale University.

Anthony Tilke – Committee Member – spent 25 interesting years in international schools and 40 overall in libraries and information science. His doctoral thesis (Charles Sturt University, Australia) examined international school library impact on the IB Diploma Programme (DP), which was accepted without amendment. This inspired the writing of his book, The International Baccalaureate Diploma Program and the School Library: Inquiry-Based Education, and various academic articles. An accredited IB workshop leader, he has contributed ideas and content for IB documentation, including the IB Ideal Libraries project, and curriculum review for the Extended Essay. He has been school/youth library adviser for the then Library Association, in London, and a background as teacher, school and public librarian. Involved with various book awards, he especially treasures memories of being a judge for the UK Carnegie Medal. User perception of school libraries and library design are interests, plus the host culture concept, in which translated literature contribute to strategies for collection development. Twitter: @DPlibrarian

B.J. Woodstein – Committee Member – is a Swedish-to-English translator, writer, editor, EDI consultant, lactation consultant, and doula, as well as an honorary professor in literature and translation at the University of East Anglia in England. Her most recent books include We’re Here! A Practical Guide to Becoming an LGBTQ+ Parent, Translation and Genre, and The Portrayal of Breastfeeding in Literature, as well as the translation of We are Lions! by Jens Mattsson, with illustrations by Jenny Lucander, and The Summer of Diving by Sara Stridsberg, with illustrations by Sara Lundberg. She lives with her wife and their daughters in Norwich, England.

Samantha Bremekamp – Adjunct Committee Member – is an International Children’s Literature Researcher for Rutgers University working on the Carnegie Whitney Grant Project curating International Youth Literature collections to be made available to librarians across the United States in both libraries and schools. She became a double award winning school librarian during the pandemic with the prestigious Making It Happen! Award presented by both the International School Technology in Education (ISTE) and the New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL). Samantha was also presented with the Teachers Who Rock! Award created and presented by the radio stations 95.9 WRAT-FM | 100.1 WJRZ-FM. As an innovation teacher and school media specialist using novel engineering, Samantha instills design thinking with STEM/STEAM and SEL themes throughout all of her lessons. Books have been her constant friends, and Samantha shares the magic of books every single day. Twitter: @LiterallySmash