ACES is excited to announce the online conference will feature two keynote speakers. Alaina Lavoie will speak on Thursday, April 22, and Anissa Gray will speak on Friday, April 23.
Alaina Lavoie is the communications manager of We Need Diverse Books, where she was previously a volunteer for three years. She also teaches in the MFA program at Emerson College and is a book reviewer for Booklist, the review magazine published by the American Library Association. She was awarded a 2017 Bookbuilders of Boston scholarship for her work advocating for marginalized voices in the publishing industry. Her work has been published under the byline Alaina Leary in the New York Times, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, Refinery29, Good Housekeeping, Bitch, Glamour, Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and more. She lives with her wife, two literary cats, and a rainbow bookshelf.
Anissa Gray is a Senior Editor at CNN Worldwide and a contributor to Emmy and DuPont-Columbia award-winning coverage of some of the most consequential stories of our time. She began her career at Reuters as a reporter, based in New York, covering business news and international finance. Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Gray studied English and American literature at New York University. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her wife.