Featured Speakers

John Leguizamo is an award-winning actor, writer, and producer whose work across film, theatre, television, and literature centers on storytelling and cultural representation. His credits include Chef, Sisters, Ride Along, The Infiltrator, and John Wick: Chapter 2. His acclaimed one-man show Latin History for Morons explored more than 3,000 years of Latin American history while challenging whose stories are taught and remembered. In August 2026, Scholastic will publish KIKI & THE CAN, a picture book created with graffiti artist John “Crash” Matos that celebrates creativity, literacy, and cultural pride, underscoring the importance of inclusive stories for young readers.

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of Southern California, she attended Boston University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical voice. A lifelong history buff, she has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga and two books set in the Italian Renaissance before turning to the 20th century with The Alice Network, The Huntress, The Rose Code, The Diamond Eye, and The Briar Club. The Astral Library is her first foray into magic realism.

We are thrilled to welcome Kate Bowler to the stage to help us wrap up TLA 2026 and send our community home inspired. Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher’s Wife and hosts the popular podcast Everything Happens. A Duke University professor, she earned a master’s of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD at Duke University.

Mychal Threets is a librarian, mental health advocate, and the library’s number one fan (according to himself, admittedly). He was raised in his local library as a home-school kid, and got his first library card at the age of five. He got his first library job as a library shelver at the library he grew up in and worked his way up to become Supervising Librarian of that very same library. He is very open about his mental health. He talks about it in hopes that it’ll help others in their mental health journey. He is adamant about encouraging people to believe him when he says he’s happy they are here.

He considers it an honor to the library people who raised him that he is a recipient of the 2024 “I Love My Librarian” award from the American Library Association, one of School Library Journal’s 2024 Movers and Shakers, one of TIME Magazine’s 2024 Next Generation Leaders, a 2024 winner of The Webby Awards for social impact, and one of the 2025 TIME Magazine’s inaugural list of 100 creators. He is the author of I’m So Happy You’re Here: A Celebration of Library Joy, published by Random House Children’s Books and illustrated by Lorraine Nam. He is proud to be Resident Librarian for PBS and PBS Kids. He will never believe that he serves as the host of the revival of Reading Rainbow.