B. B. Alston
In a quiet corner of South Carolina, where winding country roads stretch toward the horizon and cicadas hum in the summer dusk, B. B. Alston began dreaming up worlds far bigger than his hometown. Long before his debut novel Amari and the Night Brothers catapulted him onto the global literary stage, he was crafting spooky short stories for his middle school classmates—sometimes just to spook them, other times to see if he could.
What sets Alston apart in the crowded landscape of middle-grade fantasy isn’t just his imagination—it’s the urgency in his storytelling. His protagonist, Amari Peters, isn’t just navigating magic; she’s pushing back against every closed door, every voice that says she doesn’t belong. There’s real-world fire beneath the spells and secret societies. His books don’t whisper escapism—they roar with it, yet they always return to themes of identity, injustice, and resilience. In a genre often content to follow formula, Alston reinvents the rules.
