Stephen Briseño

Stephen Briseño is an award-winning children's author, seasoned educator, and lifelong story lover based in San Antonio, Texas — and he has been at it since the very beginning. He started reading at age three and never stopped. Growing up, his grandfather, a Mexican immigrant, wove stories around him: stories of life in Mexico and Texas, of crossing borders, of the challenges and quiet dignities of immigrant life. Stephen listened. He also traveled to Mexico with his parents to visit family there, crossing borders himself, absorbing the texture of a life that stretched across two countries. All of that listening and crossing eventually found its way onto the page.

His debut picture book, The Notebook Keeper: A Story of Kindness from the Border, earned a Pura Belpré Author Honor and was recognized as a 2023 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association — a striking first statement from a writer who had clearly been gathering material for years. His next picture book, Tamales for Christmas, is just as personal: it's based directly on his own grandmother, who was the heart of her familia, and whose seasonal labor of love — making and selling tamales — became the heart of a story about generosity, tradition, and Latine family life. The book was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2024. His grandmother would have been pleased.

By day Stephen teaches middle school English in San Antonio, a job he has held for fifteen years — long enough, he jokes, to explain all the gray hair in his beard. He is also a writing consultant, a poet, and a photographer, which means his creative life has never been confined to one form. When he's not in a classroom or at a desk, you might find him out on a long hike or on a skateboard, which is not a thing most people expect from their children's book authors and is exactly why it's worth mentioning. He is warm, funny, and genuinely self-deprecating in the way that only people who have spent fifteen years with middle schoolers can be.

At home in San Antonio, he and his wife Kayla — who is also a teacher — share their life with their daughter Zinnia and a dog named Charlie. The family reads, writes, and consumes, by Stephen's own admission, a truly impressive amount of coffee together. It is the kind of household where stories are taken seriously and tamales are made with love, which is more or less exactly what you'd expect.