Dashka Slater

Dashka Slater is a New York Times–bestselling author and journalist whose work spans children’s picture books, young adult nonfiction, and fiction for adults. She is the author of The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives, a young adult true-crime narrative about a 2013 attack on an agender teenager in Oakland, California that began as an article for The New York Times Magazine and went on to win the 2018 Stonewall Book Award, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, and the California Book Award Gold Medal for Young Adult Literature, among other honors; in 2021 it was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.

In addition to The 57 Bus, Slater has written numerous books for children and adults, including the novel The Wishing Box, which was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and picture books such as Baby Shoes, Firefighters in the Dark, The Sea Serpent and Me, Dangerously Ever After, and Escargot. An award‑winning reporter, she spent about a decade as a local journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area before writing for national outlets including The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Salon, Mother Jones, and Sierra.[