2025 Signature Event

Author Kwame Alexander and illustrator Dare Coulter highlighted the Children’s Book Guild’s Signature Event on May 31—an event that also celebrated the Guild’s 80th anniversary. The Guild also remembered the late Roz Beitler, a member for many years, who honored the guild with a generous bequest.

In remarks to a crowd of several dozen people at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Coulter, who grew up in the D.C. area, said, “My favorite thing about art is how it reaches people.” Her slide presentation included not only her art for children’s books but also her public art, such as a mural in North Carolina on a site near where Black people were sold into slavery. 

Coulter illustrated Alexander’s 2023 picture book An American Story, which won the 2024 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book Award.

Alexander, a Guild member who appeared in conversation with Guild Vice President Caroline Brewer, recounted his successes—for example, winning…