Anika Aldamuy Denise

Anika Aldamuy Denise is an award-winning children’s book author whose picture book biography Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré received a 2020 Pura Belpré Author Honor, an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor for outstanding children’s nonfiction, and the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for Early Readers, and was named a best children’s book of 2019 by multiple major institutions including Smithsonian Magazine, School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, and several other public libraries and educational organizations. Her work often celebrates her Puerto Rican heritage, and she is also the author of A Girl Named Rosita: The Story of Rita Moreno: Actor, Singer, Dancer, Trailblazer!, The Love Letter, and the Starring Carmen! series, among other titles.

A proud Puerto Rican daughter from Queens, Denise writes stories that reflect her bicultural upbringing and focus on family and the contributions of influential Latinas, aiming to inspire young readers, particularly within the Latinx community. She is a Pura Belpré Honor–winning author and has more than thirteen years of experience publishing books with major trade houses including Penguin Random House, Macmillan (Henry Holt), HarperCollins, Abrams, and Scholastic. Denise now lives in **Rhode Island