Aya Khalil is the award-winning author of The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story, which is an NCTE’s Charlotte Huck Award Recommended Book and a 2021 Arab American Book Award among other honors, The Night Before Eid: A Muslim Family Story (2023) and The Banned Books Bake Sale: A Protest Story (2023). Aya holds a master’s degree in Education and works as a freelance journalist, whose articles have been featured in The Huffington Post and The Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. She immigrated from Egypt to the United States when she was young and currently lives with her partner and three children in Northwest Ohio. Find her at: ayakhalil.com