Animal Writes

New York Times-bestselling author Dashka Slater has been described as a “triple threat” for her success in journalism, adult fiction, and children’s literature. The author of many books of fiction and nonfiction for children, teenagers, and adults, her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide. Her writing has won numerous awards, including the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for her nonfiction narrative, Accountable, the 2023 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Award for her short story, The Jeanines of Summer, and the 2018 Wanda Gág Read Aloud Award for her picture book, Escargot.

Dashka’s true crime narrative, The 57 Bus, has received dozens of accolades, including the Stonewall Book Award, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor and a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Silver Medal. In 2021, The 57 Bus was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time and in 2025 it was named to Kirkus’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of the Century (So Far).

A Two-Time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Dashka is a frequent speaker at schools, conferences, colleges, and universities. She lives in Oakland, California amid many piles of books and a fair number of fountain pens, and teaches in the MFA in Writing for Young Readers program at the University of San Francisco.