MIA MCKENZIE is the award-winning author of the novels These Heathens, Skye Falling and The Summer We Got Free. She’s from Philadelphia, and although she hasn’t lived there in years, she still uses the word “jawn” every day, so you know she’s a Philadelphian through and through.

She’s also the author of the collection of essays, Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender, which has been taught in college and university classes all over the country. She is the editor of The Solidarity Struggle: How People of Color Succeed and Fail at Showing Up For Each Other in the Fight for Freedom.

Mia created BGD, the first and only popular media website that centered queer and trans people of color, which published the work of hundreds of LGBTQ Black, Indigenous and POC writers and reached millions of readers across the globe.

Mia likes gardening, bourbon, reading novels, swearing, pretending she’s going to play sports every summer and then not doing that, and kids, especially her own.