Keynotes
Opening Keynote with Kaz Windness
Together We Grow: An Honest Conversation about Creative Transformation,
Blooming Late, and the Importance of Teamwork and Community
Closing Keynote with Sayantani DasGupta
Further In: Harvesting Your Creativity from the Body, Self and Soul
Stories are the seeds of our human existence. They are the ways we understand ourselves and each other, they are the way that we engage with the world around us, they are the imagination incubators through which we can dream into being better tomorrows. This keynote use Narrative Medicine techniques, including some audience engagement writing prompts, to discuss how we each draw from our personal sources of creativity even when writing for or about others. This talk will encourage members to go, as poet Tomas Transtromer writes, "further in" -- identifying how our body-minds and life circumstances are the gardens that grow our different creative lives - and draw from our esoterically personal artistic touchstones even as we come together in our abundant creative communities.
Keynote Speakers
Kaz Windness
Kaz Windness is the award-winning, genre-crossing illustrator and author of funny and heart-warming books for young readers. Proudly neurodivergent (ASD/ADHD), Kaz specializes in character-driven books celebrating inclusivity, grit, and kindness. Her many books include the Geisel Honor recipient, “Worm and Caterpillar are Friends,” the Dolly Parton Imagination Library selection, “When You Love a Book,” and the acclaimed autism acceptance Bitsy Bat series. Kaz taught illustration at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design for 12+ years and is the founder of The Cuddlefish Academy, where she inspires students to tell stories with pictures. Kaz lives in Colorado with her English-teacher husband, two teenage children, and a bunny-obsessed Boston Terrier named Remy. Kaz loves making deep-dish pizza from scratch and sketching animals at the zoo.
Sayantani DasGupta
Sayantani DasGupta is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed, Bengali folktale and string theory-inspired Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond books, the first of which—The Serpent’s Secret—was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, a Booklist Best Middle Grade Novel of the 21st Century, and an EB White Read Aloud Honor Book. She is also the author of two other series set in the Kingdom Beyond multiverse, the anticolonial Fire Queen series and the environmentally themed adventures, Secrets of the Sky. She is also the author of the forthcoming museum heist and art repatriation adventure Theft of the Ruby Lotus, as well as Anika and the Great Dog Rescue (a Girl Scouts book), She Persisted: Virginia Apgar. She additionally has written two Jane Austen inspired contemporary YA novels, Debating Darcy and Rosewood: A Midsummer Meet Cute. Sayantani is a pediatrician by training, but now teaches at Columbia University. When she’s not writing or reading, Sayantani spends time watching cooking shows with her trilingual children and protecting her black Labrador retriever Khushi from the many things that scare him, including plastic bags. She can be found online at sayantanidasgupta.com and on both Instagram and TikTok @sayantanidasguptabooks.