Where We Come from

John Coy is the author of young adult novels, the 4 for 4 middle-grade series, and nonfiction and fiction picture books including Hoop Genius, Game Changer, Their Great Gift, Dads, If We Were Gone, and Where We Come From. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Marion Vannett Ridgway Award, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year, and the Burr/Warzalla Award for Distinguished Achievement in Children's Literature. John lives by the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color and Dream Country, young adult novels that won Minnesota Book Awards, as well the picture book Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight and the memoir/novel The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption. She coauthored the children's picture book Where We Come From. Gibney teaches writing in the English department at Minneapolis College. Visit her on Instagram @shannonelainegibney and Twitter @GibneyShannon. 

Sun Yung Shin was adopted from Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is an award-winning multigenre author or editor of nine books for adults and children, including Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, coedited with Julia Chinyere Oparah and Jane Jeong Trenka. Her latest books are Where We Come From, a picture book coauthored with Diane Wilson, Shannon Gibney, and John Coy and illustrated by Dion MBD; The Wet Hex (poems); and the essay anthology What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Diane Wilson is an award-winning writer, speaker, and editor. Her work includes Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (2006), Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (2011), and The Seed Keeper (2021) which won the Minnesota Book Award. Her essays have been featured in many publications, including We Are Meant to Rise; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; and A Good Time for the Truth. Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.