Jack Gantos isn’t your typical award-winning author. Before writing the Joey Pigza series, Rotten Ralph, and the Newbery Medal-winning Dead End in Norvelt, he served time in prison for smuggling hashish—a moment he turned into the acclaimed memoir Hole in My Life (a Michael L. Printz Honor and Sibert Honor Book). In this powerful conversation, Gantos opens up about second chances, censorship, ADHD, and how storytelling became his lifeline. Educators and librarians can explore his school visit offerings and presentations at jackgantos.com.

How do you write books that change lives—and why are they being banned?

In this inspiring interview, National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson joins Christopher Lau, host of UNBAN COOLIES, to discuss the power of literature to make young readers feel seen. Woodson talks about how her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming became both a classic and a target of censorship, and shares her thoughts on slow reading, storytelling, and what books can do that social media can’t.

We also explore how adults can guide children through tough themes in books, why some parents fear honest stories, and what it means to see your work challenged in today's climate. Woodson’s words are calm but urgent—calling for courage, compassion, and curiosity in how we share stories with the next generation.

About Jacqueline Woodson:

Jacqueline Woodson is one of America’s most celebrated authors for children and young adults. Her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming won the National Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, and a Newbery Honor. She’s also the author of Feathers, After Tupac and D Foster, Show Way, The Day You Begin, and more. Woodson has served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and has been honored with both the Hans Christian Andersen Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her work often explores identity, memory, family, and the Black experience in America.

Interview hosted by Christopher Lau, founder of UNBAN COOLIES, a platform dedicated to amplifying diverse voices and defending the freedom to read.

Christopher Paul Curtis didn’t set out to become a literary legend—he was clocking 10-hour shifts on the General Motors assembly line, fighting exhaustion and monotony one car door at a time. But in stolen moments on the factory floor, he found escape through writing—stories scribbled between bolts and metal that would later earn him the Newbery Medal and redefine children’s literature. In this revealing interview, Curtis shares the unlikely journey behind Bud, Not Buddy and The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, born not from privilege, but perseverance. He opens up about navigating life as a Black man in America, the childhood moment his mother gave him permission to imagine, and how censorship threatens to erase the very history his books work to preserve.