Sean Gold is a young, black author with a disability in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a public speaker, an advocate for people with disabilities, former president of the disability-owned nonprofit Coalition for Truth in Independence, former media director of FestAbility, former board member of St. Louis Publishers Association, and current host of the YouTube series Crippled by Culture. 

Sean’s faith, family, and friends are the most important things in his life. His disability is cerebral palsy, and he has had a tracheostomy breathing tube since he was one and a half years old. Sean is nonverbal, but, as you can tell, it doesn’t get in the way of his love of creative writing and storytelling.

Stephen Perkins is the author and publisher behind Proverbs From The Hood™, a children’s picture book series created to help kids build empathy, confidence, and problem-solving skills through story, conversation, and lived experience, without being told what to think. 

Rooted in the rhythms and realities of Black urban America and built around characters like Swoosh and MooMoo, his rhyming books turn timeless proverbs into culturally authentic stories children actually see themselves in. His published titles include Strength in Numbers and Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover, with a third, Going Against the Grain, on the way.