Mitali Perkins
Children, Fiction, Young Adult
Mitali Perkins served as Calvin University's inaugural Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in 2023. She has written many books for young readers, including Between Us and Abuela (2020 Charlotte Huck Honor Book, Winner of the Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature); Forward Me Back To You (SLJ and Kirkus Best YA Books of 2019); You Bring the Distant Near (nominated for a National Book Award, six starred reviews); and Rickshaw Girl (adapted into a film by Sleeperwave Productions). All of these narratives explore crossing different kinds of borders. Indeed, Perkins' fiction explores topics like poverty, immigration, child soldiers, microcredit, and human trafficking. Her range of subjects owes much to her living overseas for many years, as well as to studying Political Science at Stanford and Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Her goal in fiction is to make readers laugh or cry, preferably both, as long as their hearts are widening. She lives and writes in the East Bay.
