Hannah Ehrlich, director of marketing and publicity at multicultural children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, discussed the state of diversity in publishing. Using a recent study of children’s literature, she found that while the representation of diverse characters was improving, there is still a great deal of work to do in promoting equity among authors. For example, Black, Latinx and Native authors combined wrote only 7% of the new children’s books published in 2017. Hannah then discussed the results of Lee & Low’s 2015 Diversity Baseline Study, which revealed that representation of several marginalized populations is also lacking behind the scenes at publishing companies. Editorial departments are overwhelmingly white, female, straight, and non-disabled. Hannah highlighted useful institutions and initiatives that are helping to bring forward underrepresented authors and recruit and retain diverse publishing professionals. She concluded by suggesting thought-exercises and readings to challenge our perceptions and unintentional sources of bias. Hannah has generously allowed us to post the presention she used during our meeting. You can download it here.