Join us March 22, 2025!
Our team is excitedly working to make the next Adoptee Literary Festival our best yet! We look forward to welcoming you all for a day full of learning, sharing, and community building. You can learn more about each member of our board and organizing team below.
Susan Ito
Co-Director
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen,The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and has also been awarded residencies at The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at Mills College/Northeastern University and Bay Path University. She was one of the co-organizers of Rooted and Written, a no-fee writing workshop for writers of color. She lives in Northern California.
Alice Stephens
Co-Founder & Co-Director
Alice Stephens’ debut novel, Famous Adopted People, was published in 2018 by Unnamed Press. Her work has appeared in LitHub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Margins, The Washington Post, and other publications, and has been anthologized in Volume IX of the DC Women’s Writers Grace & Gravity series, Furious Gravity (2020), and Writing the Virus (Outpost19, 2020). She is a book reviewer, essayist, short story writer, co-facilitator of the Adoptee Voices Writing Group, and writes a column, Alice in Wordland, for the Washington Independent Review of Books. Her historical novel, The Twain, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in 2027.
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
Co-Founder, Board Member
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), which won the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, the Knight Foundation, and Kundiman, among others. She is a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair. For more info, visit www.MarciCalabretta.com.
Sara Easterly
Board Member
Sara Easterly is an adoptee and the author of books that include newly released Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), co-authored with birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard and adoptive parent Lori Holden, as well as the award-winning spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom (Heart Voices, 2019). Sara’s essays, articles, and book reviews have been widely published.
Sara has long been supporting other writers and adoptees. She is the founder of Adoptee Voices, the Faith Collective for Truth and Healing in Adoption, and previously led one of the largest chapters of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI), where she was recognized as SCBWI Member of the Year.
Mariama J. Lockington
Board Member
Mariama J. Lockington is an adoptee, author, and educator. Mariama’s middle-grade debut, For Black Girls Like Me, earned five starred reviews and was a Today Show Best Kids’ Book of 2019. Her sophomore middle-grade book, In The Key of Us, earned a Stonewall Honor Award and was featured in the New York Times. Her debut young adult novel, Forever is Now, is the 2024 winner of the Schneider Family Teen Book Award. Mariama’s forthcoming YA novel, I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, will be out October 14th, 2025.
Mariama’s poetry has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Buzzfeed News Reader, Bodega Magazine, and Prelude Magazine, and she is the author of the poetry chapbook The Lucky Daughter (2016). She is a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Alum, a Voices of Our Nation Arts Alum, a Hedgebrook Alum, and she holds a Masters in Education from Lesley University and a Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry from San Francisco State University.
Mariama calls many places home, but currently lives in Kentucky with her wife and an abundance of plants. You can find her on Bluesky @marilock and on Instagram/TikTok @forblackgirlslikeme.
Shelby Redfield Kilgore
Sizzle Reel Producer
Shelby is a Korean adoptee with a passion to share adoption stories through the video lens. Her journey of documenting stories from the adoption constellation began in 2012 and she hopes to continue this work for years to come. You can find her documentaries at her YouTube Channel Shelby Redfield Kilgore.
Shelley Gaske
Webmaster
Shelley Gaske (she/her) is a queer and disabled adoptee writing in Oregon. An attendee of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a 2025 Key West Literary Seminar Fellow, her work appears in 68 to 05, The Ana, and elsewhere.
Kim Sue Stevens
Fundraising Lead
Kim Sue Stevens was adopted along with her bio brother into the same American family who were stationed in South Korea. After immigrating to the US, she was raised in central Texas in a predominantly white community with few racial mirrors and even less cultural socializations. In that environment, she was taught to ignore the racism and microaggressions which caused her to deny a lot of her identity and curiosity until much later in life. She is honoring her truth and reclaiming her identity by educating herself and her children who are 2nd generation adoptees. Adoptee authors have lived experience and it is important that their/our voices are heard and amplified. She is excited to support the Adoptee Literary Festival.
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