Library closed for Easter

All Library locations are closed Sunday, April 5, 2025. Online collections and services (except chat/help), remain accessible.

Kwame Mbalia

Kwame Mbalia

Kwame is a husband, father, writer, a New York Times bestselling author, and a former pharmaceutical metrologist in that order. His debut middle-grade novel, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it—along with the sequels Tristan Strong Destroys the World and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching, is published by Rick Riordan Presents/Disney-Hyperion. He is the co-author of Last Gate of the Emperor with Prince Joel Makonnen, from Scholastic Books, and the editor of the #1 New York Times bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy, published by Delacourte Press. A Howard University graduate and a Midwesterner now in North Carolina, he survives on Dad jokes and Cheezits.

We first hosted Kwame at the 2022 Children's Festival of Reading and are very excited to have him back to celebrate our 20th anniversary!

Author
Program
Children's Festival 2022
Children's Festival 2026