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Dashka Slater is the New York Times-bestselling author of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. Her 2023 nonfiction narrative, Accountable, won the 2024 Gold Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) as well as the Golden Poppy Award in Children’s Nonfiction from the California Independent Booksellers Association (CALIBA). It has appeared on more than a dozen different end of the year best lists and receiving four starred reviews. Her 2017 YA true crime narrative The 57 Bus has also received numerous accolades, including the Stonewall Book Award, the California Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, as well as being a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist, an LA Times Book Award Finalist, and being named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Her picture book The Antlered Ship was a Junior Library Guild selection, received four starred reviews, and was named one of the best picture books of the year by Amazon.com. She is also the author of the beloved Escargot picture book series, the first book of which received the Wanda Gag Read-Aloud Award and was a finalist for the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award, and the Feylawn Chronicles, a middle grade fantasy series. The recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Dashka lives in Oakland, California.

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Q&A with Dashka Slater

How did you come to teach at Hamline MFAC? I gave a guest lecture a couple of years ago and apparently people liked it, because I was then approached to see if I would join the faculty. Given that so many of my favorite writers are on faculty, it was an easy sell!
What’s your favorite part of residency? I love the hive-mind brilliance that happens in workshop, when a bunch of smart and creative people talk about a manuscript, what it’s doing well, and how it can do it even better.
How would you describe your faculty advising style? Diagnostic. I love working with writers to figure out what is getting in the way of their project being everything they want it to be.
What’s your favorite book to recommend to MFAC students? I find myself recommending very different things to different writers, so I don’t know that I have one go-to. But I do find myself recommending books by Ibi Zoboi an awful lot, particularly American Street.
Image	We asked you to send a photo that represents a favorite Hamline memory. What's happening in your photo? I love the walk to campus in the morning, even when it’s snowy and cold. It’s a chance to wake up, chat, and marvel at the landscape (all that snow is exciting for a Californian!). Here you’ll see me, Minh Le, and Lisa Jahn-Clough bundled up and grinning on the slippery tromp to school.

Young adult