Live Q&A | Safe Haven: Creating Safe Educations Spaces that Destigmatize the Teen Mental Health Experience

Description
YA authors and mental health advocates, Rocky Callen and Nora Shalaway Carpenter, and youth librarians will draw from their own experiences and research surveying teens, educators, and librarians to show how to create safe spaces that destigmatize mental health issues for young people. By discussing language, barriers, programmings, and the importance of inclusivity, participants will get ideas to invigorate their own practices for mental health education and advocacy (for their teens and themselves). They will also walk away with a comprehensive resource guide with vetted recommended books for their collections, examples of activities for programming, and scripts to open up conversations.
Presenter(s)
Nora Shalaway Carpenter
A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Art’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program, Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the author of The Edge of Anything (a Best Book of 2020: Kirkus Reviews and A Mighty Girl, a Cybils Awards finalist, Discover Great Books Through Reading 2021 selection) and contributing editor of Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America (an NPR Best Book of 2020, a YALSA Best Fiction YA 2022 nominee, Country Living’s Front Porch Book Club selection, Nautilus winner, and a Junior Library Guild selection). Her forthcoming anthology, Ab(solutely) Normal, is co-edited with Rocky Callen and subverts mental health stereotypes. Her forthcoming novel, Fault Lines, offers an unflinching examination of socio-economics, gender expectations, and environmental ethics, set in a troubled but gorgeous Appalachian landscape. Originally from rural West Virginia, she currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Connect with her at noracarpenterwrites.com.


Rocky Callen
Rocky Callen, the daughter of an Ecuadorian immigrant, is a former behavioral coach, and has a degree in Political Science and Communication from Trinity University. She also has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her debut novel, A Breath Too Late, grapples with issues of suicide, mental health and domestic violence, and is inspired by her own experiences. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Absolutely Normal, a collection that features protagonists with mental health conditions. She is passionate about raising awareness of these issues for young people. She is a part of Las Musas, a collective of Latinx writers for children literature. She is currently a LCLAA Trabajadoras Fellow. She lives outside of Washington, DC with her husband, daughter, and son. Rocky founded the HoldOn2Hope Project, which unites creatives in suicide prevention and mental health awareness.


Cearra Harris
For the last decade, Cearra Harris has worked diligently to find the “spice” of her community, creating outreach programs that focus on teens’ immediate needs. She received her MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Cearra’s career began at Richland Library in Columbia, SC. While working at Richland Library, Cearra fell in love with programming and developed a strong passion for serving underserved communities. She previously worked for Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system as a Teen Librarian. Cearra was a 2018-2019 YALSA Spectrum Scholar and a 2020 Young Researchers Professional Development Fellow with the University of Illinois iSchool. Cearra is now a Presidential Fellow and Doctoral student in the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina-Columbia.


Deleon Awill
Dr. Deleon Awill is a school librarian in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She dedicates her time and studies to promoting young adult literature as a means of healing. Her research surrounds Black librarianship and the representation of Black young adults in literature with a focus on the representation of Black women.


Tye Anderson
Tye has worked in both academic and public libraries over the last 15 years, and has been a youth services librarian for five years. He was born and raised in the mountains of Western North Carolina where he lives with his librarian wife, an elderly Corgi, and a semi-tame stray cat.

 


Sabrina Robinson

Posted in Live Q&A, On-Demand.