Krishan Trotman is the co-author of the Queens of the Resistance series and Vice President and Publisher of Legacy Lit, an imprint at Hachette Book Group in New York. She was recently celebrated in the New York Times and Essence magazine as one of the few African American publishing executives. New York magazine called her as one of Publishing’s New Power Club, and she’s been featured in Salon, Shondaland, Cheddar TV, MSN, and more. She has committed over fifteen years to publishing books by and about multicultural voices and social justice. Throughout her career, she has proudly worked with leaders and trailblazers on this frontier such as John Lewis, Stephanie Land, Malcolm Nance, Zerlina Maxwell, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Al Roker, Ed Gordon, Lindy West, Debra Lee, Deesha Dyer, and other dynamic celebrity and bestselling authors. She is the self-described Beyoncé of Books, and mom to her son Bleu.

Yahdon Israel has a passion for promoting literacy and connecting readers with books. He brings an entrepreneurial spirit to these pursuits as the founder of a popular book club, host of a literary podcast, creative writing teacher, event producer, magazine editor, and writer, as well as his work in support of several prestigious literary awards.

A graduate of Pace University, Yahdon has an MFA from The New School and teaches creative writing at CUNY and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Guernica, LitHub, and other outlets. He was the Editorial Director of Northside Media and Editor-in-Chief of Brooklyn Magazine. He also served as Content and Social Media Director for MakersFinders, Inc.

Yahdon began snapping pictures of stylishly dressed New Yorkers reading books around town and posting them on Instagram with the hashtag #LiterarySwag. This practice morphed into a cultural movement comprising the LiterarySwag Book Club, which boasts hundreds of members, monthly meetings, and a robust social media presence; and the podcast Lit, a weekly interview series hosted by Yahdon featuring writers talking about books and culture. Yahdon describes Literary Swag as “the intersection of fashion and literature, which makes literature more accessible to people who don’t read” (the quote is from this NBC News video interview with him).

Yahdon has also served as a preliminary reader for both the Whiting Award and the Aspen Words Literary Award and has worked extensively with the board of the National Book Critics Circle, including helping to produce the NBCC Awards ceremony.

At Simon & Schuster, Yahdon acquires both fiction and nonfiction.

Dawn Raffel is an independent developmental editor, teacher, and mentor to emerging writers. Prior to going independent, she served for many years as a senior-level magazine editor, including at O, The Oprah Magazine, which she helped launch. She is the author of six critically acclaimed books (fiction and nonfiction), including The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies, which won a Christopher Award for books that promote the highest values of the human spirit. Her latest, Boundless as the Sky, is literary fiction inspired in part by Italo Calvino’s classic Invisible Cities and by the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, as the threat of fascism loomed. The Chicago Tribune called it “marvelous and arresting.” She teaches at the Center for Fiction and International Literary Seminars, most recently in Kenya.

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