Swords, Seas, and Returning Home: Epic Quests and Cultural Magic in YA Fantasy

Magic, masks, and seadragons collide in this YA fantasy panel about young heroes who must face the past to claim their futures, drawing power from the cultures that shaped them. Sandra Proudman, Makiia Lucier, and Samantha Chong craft lush, high-stakes adventures where family, legacy, and identity are as potent as spells. In Salvación, Mexican American author Sandra Proudman reimagines El Zorro through a Latinx heroine who defends her Alta California town’s mystical sal negra and her family from encroaching violence, blending swashbuckling romance with Mexican history and resistance. Makiia Lucier, who grew up on the Pacific island of Guam, channels island life and oceanic mythology in Dragonfruit, following exiled Hanalei as she studies seadragons and seizes a single, impossible chance to return home and right a terrible wrong. Malaysian writer S. Chong’s Prodigal Tiger sends an exiled witch from a magical academy in New York back to Penang, where Malaysian folklore, Peranakan heritage, and vengeful ghosts force her to confront what it means to belong in the diaspora. Moderated by bookstagrammer and literary influencer Dahlia De La Vega of @ofpagesandprint, who champions YA, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction, this conversation dives into how culture, community, and home shape the new fantasies and futures young readers can now see themselves in.