Olugbemisola Amusashonubi-Perkovich

The Bold Idea:

The Curious Adventures of Tara Belle Bradley was designed to engage teen girls in leadership, creative arts, and literacy projects. With three groups in the Bronx, Washington Heights, and the Lower East Side, she created original scripts and activities to engage girls in discussion about and planning for future educational and career goals. The program ran for two years, after which she continued to work with children and teens, through Cornell University Cooperative Extension, as a classroom facilitator in the UN's "Understanding Nations" program, and the director of a program for children and teens at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Recently, Olugbemisola's debut middle-grade novel EIGHTH-GRADE SUPERZERO, about Brooklyn middle-schooler Reginald "Pukey" McKnight, a nobody who discovers the superhero within himself thanks to his friends, his work at a local homeless shelter, his campaign for school president, and a pair of "Dora the Explorer" sneakers; to Cheryl Klein at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, by Erin Murphy at Erin Murphy Literary." 

Biography:

After Echoing Green, she was an editor at various urban-oriented teen magazines, online contributor to American Baby and Healthy Kids magazines, and developed educational materials for organizations including Girls, Inc., React.com, and Sunburst Communications. She received her MA in Educational Communication and Technology, with a concentration in Adolescent Literacy and English Education and spent some time working with schools and community groups to develop strategies that used computer technology to develop metacognitive thinking and literacy skills. She also spent four years teaching in a preschool religious education program. She recently completed her first manuscript, a middle grade/young adult novel.