Browsing: Authors

Meredith Walker is best known as the co-founder and Executive Director of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, a positive, inclusive online community for young people. Prior to her work with Smart Girls, she built a distinguished career in television as a producer for Nick News and as the head of the talent department for Saturday Night

Interview by Paul Salfen, Text by Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine  Imagine writing more than 30 novels for young readers over four decades, winning the Newbery Medal, and then—after a 15-year break—returning to a beloved series that began with a simple schoolyard chant. That’s exactly what Newbery Medal-winning author Jerry Spinelli has done with Fifth

Interview by Paul Salfen, Text by Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine In an era when algorithms fight for every second of a teenager’s attention and one viral catastrophe can shatter lives, award-winning author Aida Salazar delivers a timely, tender, and wildly entertaining verse novel that feels like a cool river after a fever. STREAM reunites

In an exclusive interview with AMFM Magazine, actress and author Sara Amini reveals how she transformed a decade of personal essays into Mixed Feelings, her breakout semi-autobiographical graphic novel that’s earning raves from Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. Born to an Iranian immigrant father and a Colombian immigrant mother in Houston, Texas, Amini has turned

By Christine Thompson | Featuring an exclusive conversation with Paul Salfen While mortality rates from heart disease, cancer, and stroke continue to decline, another silent epidemic is exploding: chronic pain, anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia, IBS, chronic fatigue, and related conditions that rob millions of their ability to truly live. Modern medicine excels at acute care and

By Paul Salfen, Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine In an exclusive interview with AMFM Magazine, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray opens up about his bold transition from Hollywood blockbusters to young adult fiction with Burn the Water, his gripping debut novel published by Scholastic Press on March 3, 2026. Best known for his work on Captain

By Paul Salfen Exclusive Interview at the 2026 NRB Convention No Limbs No Limits Imagine navigating a bustling day without arms or legs—walking, tending to basic needs, or embracing loved ones. This is the reality for Nicholas Vujicic, born in 1982 in Melbourne, Australia, without limbs due to an unexplained medical condition. Despite three sonograms

In a candid and revealing conversation with AMFM Magazine's Paul Salfen, former Tennessee Department of Correction Deputy Commissioner David G. Mills opens up about his remarkable 40-year career in corrections. Mills, who began as a 19-year-old correctional officer in 1975 and rose through the ranks to oversee multiple prisons as warden and eventually serve as

By Paul Salfen, Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine In a cozy corner of their family-owned Legacy Wire Products facility in DeSoto, Texas—amid the hum of a company Christmas party complete with mechanical bulls and ponies for the kids—Carla Ondrasik and her husband, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter John Ondrasik (better known as Five for Fighting), sat down with

By Paul Salfen AMFM Magazine | November 2025 National Adoption Month Exclusive In the remote mountains of Guatemala, a baby girl was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate—a condition so severe that doctors gave her no chance of survival. That baby should have died. Instead, she lived to tell a story of divine