Día De Los Niños, Día De Los Libros
►Día De Los Niños, Día De Los Libros 2025 will take place in person on the ASU Tempe campus on Thursday, April 24 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Arizona time (5 to 8 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time). It will also be livestreamed for our friends around the world! For information about how to attend, contact James Blasingame.
ASU 2025 El Día will feature Aida Salazar, winner of 51 awards for her books, including the Américas Award, Jane Addams Peace Honor, and the International Latino Book Award.
Embracing ASU’s commitment to the twenty-two Indigenous nations of Arizona, we are highlighting Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), winner of 162 book awards, including the Dishchii’Bikoh High School Reader Award from the White Mountain Apache Nation. Smith is the curator of the Heartdrum Imprint at HarperCollins, which focuses on Indigenous stories by Indigenous creators.
Also featured:
- Matt Mendez, U.S. Air Force veteran, and International Latino Book Award winner
- Davaun Sanders, a writer of speculative fiction (winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Hugo Awards) and publisher and executive editor for FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
- Pop-up poetry performed by ASU graduates and award-winning poets Myrlin Hepworth and April McCrary (Diné), along with Sam Opoku, Ghanaian poet and singer, now performing in Phoenix and working with Phonetic Spit nonprofit poetry workshop for teens
- Music by the Kyrene Mariachis!
Master of Ceremonies and Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Ríos, also an ASU Regents Professor, will receive the Flores Family Award and perform poetry written just for this event.
Every student will receive a book to have signed by its author!
This year's celebration is hosted by the ASU Department of English and Arizona Humanities. Other sponsors include ASU Foundation and ASU's Office of the President, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, humanities division of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and President's Professor Fund.