By AJ Eversole

For more than twenty five years, Cynthia Leitich Smith has shaped the landscape of children’s and young adult literature through her own award winning books and through her tireless advocacy for Native voices. I’ve had the privilege of seeing that impact up close as a contributor to Legendary Frybread Drive-In (Heartdrum, 2025), an anthology that exemplifies Cynthia’s deep belief in community, mentorship, and making space at the table. She is, in every sense, the epitome of an auntie: generous, attentive, fiercely supportive, encouraging, and always thinking about who’s coming up next.

That Legendary Frybread Drive-In went on to win the Michael L. Printz Award–one of the highest honors in young adult literature–feels especially meaningful. The book itself is so emblematic of Cynthia’s life’s work of bringing people together and creating shared space that is distinctly Indigenous. From the enduring legacy of Jingle Dancer (HarperCollins, 2000) to her recent return to picture books celebrating extended Native family networks, Cynthia’s work honors Native communities by showcasing the everyday lives of Indigenous children. In this conversation, she reflects on how her storytelling has evolved and why she remains hopeful about the future of Native children’s publishing.

Your debut picture book Jingle Dancer (HarperCollins, 2000) has become a modern classic. Over two decades later, you’re returning to picture books celebrating Native family structures. How has your approach to picture book storytelling evolved?

Jingle Dancer (HarperCollins, 2000; Heartdrum, 2021) reflects a powwow dance tradition passed down between women and girls intergenerationally and within a Muscogee-Ojibwe family. It’s a healing book, as indicated by the presence of an Elder character whose “legs don’t work so good anymore.” It’s interesting to note that when I was writing it, Ojibwe friends cautioned me to make that traditional aspect a wink to Native readers rather than spell it out. I believe now such context would’ve been more clearly integrated, but back then, there wasn’t a lot of trust in children’s books due to a long history of misrepresentation in the body of literature. Of course I honored their wishes.

I’m profoundly grateful for the support the book has received over the years and how it was able to raise awareness of Indigenous writing styles, middle-class Native people, and diversity within Indigenous Country. The book remains noteworthy for the inclusion of the character Cousin Elizabeth, a Black Indigenous attorney (at a time when few professional women were depicted at the picture book level), and Native powwow dancers, who were light-, medium, and dark-skinned. It was important to me that any child of the reflected tribes would feel reflected in that way.

The research and thoughtfulness that illustration team Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu put into their artwork was extraordinary and remains a guiding light.

My initial return to Native-focused picture book writing was last year’s Firefly Season (Heartdrum, 2025), tenderly illustrated by Kate Gardiner, which is a celebration of chosen sisterhood between two young neighbor girls, one who’s Muscogee and one who’s Indian American. HERE COME THE AUNTIES! (Heartdrum, 2026) is about the role of aunties, in all their forms, in the life of a child whose mama is expecting a new baby. I could not be more thrilled with Aphelandra’s adorable illustrations. Cute as her art is—and wow, it is!—she also does a lovely job of conveying emotion, relationships, a sense of place, and energy. All three of these books highlight extended family ties and integrate the natural world in part to show the passing of time. So, some hallmarks of my writing have endured.

That said, my picture book approach is looser, more conversational, more playful and confident. I’m less worried about how to write the story and more about what I want to say. I’ve always been experimental when it comes to craft—across age markets, genres, and formats. I dearly love short-form fiction for young readers. In fact, short stories are my favorite venue for trying something new. I also adore illustrated narratives and believe that children’s-YA literature is underappreciated for what we do to build visual literacy. It’s an honor to be creating picture books again and to be connecting them to our youngest readers.

Full disclosure for my fellow writers out there: I also wrote two picture books, both published during the in-between years, which are now out of print. They were humorous and great fun, but largely fell victim to the recession, the departure of the in-house editor, and a corporate reorganization.

Many, perhaps most, long-time authors experience career ebbs and flows. Much that happens in the publishing industry is beyond our control. But books are largely ephemeral, some for the moment, a rare few for all time, and most in between. That’s how it’s always been, and if you embrace the journey, the next writing day, you’ll find there are always new stories.

As author-curator of Heartdrum, you’ve championed countless Native voices. What’s it like to step back into the author only role for this picture book? How does your curatorial work inform your own writing?

I’ve been writing steadily since I became the author-curator of Heartdrum. For many years, I had the privilege of teaching in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I loved the work and learned so much from my students and fellow faculty members, people like Marion Dane Bauer, Norma Fox Mazer, Amy King, Rita-Williams Garcia, Kekla Magoon, and An Na. Meanwhile, we were thin on mid-career Indigenous authors with a broad, big-house publishing history who also could act as proven mentors. If Heartdrum was to come into being, it made a certain amount of sense for me to be the one to help launch it.

Fortunately, a number of Native authors are advancing in their careers with each passing year. My goal is make myself replaceable in terms of intertribal creative-community leadership, and we’re well on our way. Anyway, much of the time that went to teaching at VCFA now goes to Heartdrum and the WNDB Native Children’s-YA Writing Intensive, sponsored by the imprint.

Setting aside the books that came to market at about the time of the imprint’s first list and my two anthologies, it was a pleasure to work on the humorous middle grade novel On A Wing and A Tear for Heartdrum as well as my latest YA novel, Harvest House (Candlewick, 2024), and The Blue Stars MG graphic novel series, co-authored by Kekla Magoon and illustrated by Molly Murakami, both for Candlewick Press. Currently, I’m focused on a YA novel that apparently wants to be a suspense thriller.

As to how being a curator informs by writing, I’m especially aware of how each book fits into the larger conversation of Native voices. For example, when I found out that my friend Laurie Goodluck also had an auntie-themed picture book in the works, I touched base with her to confirm that the books would be sufficiently different and they are. Hers is more of a concept book, and mine is more of a storybook. No doubt they’ll share readers and certainly aunties deserve all the love, but if our visions had been so similar that they’d compete in the marketplace, I would’ve shelved mine.

It’s important to me that Native books grow our body of literature in thoughtful ways and that we give each other’s contributions room to breathe. Part of that is artistic and part of it is pragmatic. While there’s a need for read-alikes and reading ladders (the next stretch book, per Dr. Teri Lesesne), we should be careful not to cannibalize each other’s sales.

A library working within a budget or bookstore buyer has to consider variety on their shelves. That doesn’t mean we can have only, say, one book that touches on a topic as important as aunties or, on a more dire note, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit Relatives. But it strongly suggests that each of those titles should bring a different style and fresh perspective. Every book must earn its place. 

It wasn’t so long ago that it was nearly impossible to sell more than a very few Indigenous bylines. Fewer than five. Maybe two or three from the big trade publishers. I’m not taking our recent successes as a guarantee so much as a progress to be appreciated and nurtured.

However, I’m more precise and less precious in my approach. I believe that young readers deserve the very best quality that we have to offer them, but I’m also constantly reminded of the phenomenal excellence of everyone I work with in publishing. I trust in the skills, experience, and ideas that each team member contributes. It’s by no means all or even mostly about me, especially with a picture book wherein art and design does so much of the heavy lifting.

You have Here Come the Grandmas! coming in 2027, also illustrated by Aphelandra. Why was it important to create this series celebrating different roles in Native family networks?

I love your optimism! Right now, Here Come the Aunties! and Here Come the Grandmas! are companion books, but if they’re well received, I’d consider writing more along those lines. On a personal level, I had wonderfully supportive parents growing up, but also benefitted from my extended family and community. Young Native readers don’t get to see those sorts of relationships celebrated often enough. Because of the inherent brevity of a picture book manuscript, writers tend to frame them with fewer characters. It takes thought to figure out how to craft a large-cast picture book that flows seamlessly. Beyond that, I wanted to show mainstream readers another way of being beyond the razor focus on traditional nuclear families. Many kids are raised by single parents or working parents, and needs may go unaddressed. It’s so much harder now with people living far from their loved ones. With books like Here Come the Aunties!!, those relationships are vicariously accessible on the page, if not in real life.

Can you talk about the main character?

River is expecting a new sibling, which is an exciting time for a family but also one that will bring a lot of changes. More attention will be directed to the new arrival. Aunties will help fill in the gaps and continue to offer support and cheer on a day-to-day basis.

From Jingle Dancer to curating Heartdrum to Here Come the Aunties, you’ve spent over 25 years advocating for authentic Native representation in children’s literature. What gives you hope about where Native children’s publishing is headed?

You give me hope, AJ. The Indigenous apprentices like Alaina E. Roberts and Emmy Her Many Horses, new voices like Karina Iceberg and Christine Hartman Derr, rising stars like Cheryl Isaacs and Malia Maunakea, headliners like Byron Graves and Angeline Boulley, creative community leaders like Traci Sorell, Stacy Wells, Andrea Page, and Leslie Stall Widener, and so do those who’ve been doing the work all along. (Obviously, I could joyfully go on with regard to each category, but in the interests of space, I’m highlighting.)

A shoutout to Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, who’s in her early 90s, and the author of one of my favorite 2025 new releases, THE SUMMER OF THE BONE HORSES (Harry N. Abrams, 2025). A shout out to Lee & Low for being an early leader in publishing Native voices, to David A. Robertson and his new imprint, Swift Water Books at Penguin Random House Canada. A shout out to Native-owned presses like Thomas and Elizabeth-Albert Peacock’s Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing and to tribally-owned houses like the Pechanga Band of Indians’ Great Oak Press. A shout out to Dr. Debbie Reese and Dr. Jean Mendoza for their own nonfiction children’s writing and for their scholarship and advocacy at American Indians in Children’s Literature as well as to the National Indian Education Association and to the American Indian Literary Association. A shout out to We Need Diverse Books, especially Heartdrum’s fairy godmother Ellen Oh, to the booksellers, teachers, and librarians who supported multiculturalism and then diversity and are pushing back against book bans, and a shout out to the entire Black children’s-YA literature community, without whose leadership none of what we have done would be possible. It gives me hope that our intertribal creative community is living our values on the page and behind our bylines, that we’re coming together to collaborate on books like LEGENDARY FRYBREAD DRIVE-IN, and that we’re forming deep mentorships, friendships, kinship. It gives me hope that readers are embracing our stories and that they’re being celebrated both in and outside the classroom. It gives me hope when a young reader says about any Native titles, “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

Cynsational Notes

Cynthia Leitich Smith is a bestselling, acclaimed author of books for all ages, including Here Come the Aunties!, Firefly Season, Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, On a Wing and a Tear, Sisters of the Neversea, the Blue Stars series (with Kekla Magoon), Rain Is Not My Indian Name, Harvest House, and Hearts Unbroken, which won the American Indian Youth Literature Award. Cynthia is also the anthologist of Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids and Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories, which won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, and the American Indian Youth Literature Award. She has been honored with the American Library Association’s Children’s Literature Lecture Award and has been named the NSK Neustadt Laureate. She is the author-curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and served as the Katherine Paterson Endowed Chair on the faculty of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Cynthia is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and lives in Denton, Texas.

Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Printz Win: ‘Genuinely Gobsmacked’ by Sally Lodge from Publishers Weekly. PEEK: “Smith was determined to include new as well as experienced writers in the anthology.”

Printz Award Celebrates Indigenous Authors, Stories with 2026 Winner ‘Legendary Frybread Drive-In’ by Kara Yorio from School Library Journal. PEEK: “The original concept came from Smith: ‘These would be stories in the shared liminal space. The book would be threading the needle for teens of all ages in a way that you do in conversation when you bring all the cousins of a family together. We would be leaning into stories that often aren’t shared about people like us. [Stories] that may seem universal, like a first romance or a grief story or sibling rivalry, only putting them in our context, our cultures, our world views.’”

A.J. Eversole grew up in rural Oklahoma where the wide open spaces fed her imagination and the stories waiting to be told. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, she works across adult and children’s literature to explore themes of cultural reclamation, resilience, and the ways ancestral knowledge persists in modern worlds. Her stories appear in Legendary Frybread Drive-In (Heartdrum/HarperCollins), Beyond the Glittering World (Torrey House Press), and Never Whistle At Night Part II (Vintage, 2026). When not writing, she reports on Native Voices in literature for Cynsations News Website. Find her on socials @ajeversole.