INTRO
Jael Richardson is the founder and Executive Director of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) and the co-host of Into the FOLD: A Book and Lit Fest podcast. She has written a memoir, a novel and three children’s picture books. Her debut novel, Gutter Child was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award and the White Pine Award, and her middle grade anthology Today I Am: 10 Stories of Belonging was a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award. Richardson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario.
An essay by Richardson about parenting during the pandemic is included in the anthology Good Mom on Paper. Her first short story “Resurrection Sunday” is published in the anthology Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, and her essay “Conception” is part of Room Magazine’s first Women of Colour edition. Excerpts from her first play, my upside down black face, are published in the anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers.