Ibi Zoboi Author Talk and Book Signing

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ibi Zoboi comes her groundbreaking contemporary fantasy debut—a novel in verse based on Caribbean folklore—about the power of inherited magic and the price we must pay to live the life we yearn for.

Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times bestselling author of American Street, a National Book Award finalist; Nigeria Jones, a Coretta Scott King Award winner; Pride; My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich; Okoye to the People: A Black Panther Novel for Marvel; and the Walter Award and LA Times Book Prize–winning Punching the Air, cowritten with Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam. She is also a two-time Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner for her picture book The People Remember and her middle grade biography of Octavia Butler, Star Child. She is the editor of the anthology Black Enough. Born in Haiti and raised in New York City, she now lives in New Jersey with her family. You can find her online at ibizoboi.net.

Ibi’s most recent novel, Nigeria Jones, won the Coretta Scott King Award. Punching the Air, her YA novel coauthored with Yusef Salaam, is a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Her picture book, The People Remember, is a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She is a veteran of literary festivals and library conferences and travels to schools around the country year-round. Ibi is a force in the literary world, and her fantasy debut, (S)Kin, is bound to make a splash.

With the market for dark young adult fantasy growing, Ibi brings readers the story of a supernatural being they may not have heard of before. Soucouyants, shape-shifting spirits who fly across the sky as a fireball in search of human blood, are known for shedding their skin at night and placing them in a mortar for safekeeping, giving new depths to the phrase "Not all skin folk are kin folk."

A high-stakes dark fantasy adventure in verse, full of deep layers and insights and matched by the strength of Ibi’s lyrical voice, this coming-of-age tale filled with heartache, longing, and a little romance will thrill and delight fans of Legendborn, Cinderella Is Dead, and contemporary magical tales.

This story delves into weighty, provocative themes, told with nuance and depth—including migrant journeys, assimilation, colorism, pretty privilege, classism, and race. Ibi has all the chops (and then some) to tackle these subjects in the pages of this book—as well as later on, while promoting it.

Not every contemporary author has the skillset for magical world-building, but there’s a richness and accessibility to the layered magical underbelly of this grounded contemporary fantasy world.

Joining Ibi Zoboi will be Desiree S. Evans, a writer and editor from south Louisiana. She is co-editor of the Indie-bestselling young-adult horror fiction anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One (Flatiron Books, 2024), and a contributor to the young-adult fiction anthologies Cool. Awkward. Black. (Penguin Teen, 2023) and Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020). Desiree is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin, where she received her MFA in fiction. Visit her on the web at desiree-evans.com, and on Instagram and Twitter: @literarydesiree.

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