J.R. Rice is a Black man, writer, teacher, event host & curator, and spoken word artist, born and raised in Oakland, California. He has a B.A in Creative Writing and an English Education teaching credential from California State University of Long Beach. His novel, Broken Pencils earned the 2024 Literary Titan Gold Book Award, 2024 Pencraft Summer Best Book Award winner for Young Adult Coming of Age Fiction, and the 2024 Hawthorne Prize Finalist for Best Fiction. His poetry collection, I Was, Am, Will Be, is a continuation in the Broken Pencils series. In addition to his writing accolades, he earned the Rookie of the Year award at the 2005 National Collegiate Poetry Slam in Philadelphia. He was a Semi-Finalist in the 2023 Berkeley Poetry Slam Finals.
2025 Family Day
Speaker – Coming of Age in an Unsteady World
