Léna Roy

Léna Roy published her first novel, Edges (Farrar, Straus, Giroux Books for Young Readers) in late 2010. She is the Regional Manager for Writopia Lab in Westchester and Connecticut, and her writing was featured in the essay collection for middle school kids and their teachers, Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Essays to Devour: Your Favorite Authors Take On the Dreaded Essay Assignment. She has written, along with her sister Charlotte Jones Voiklis, a middle grade biography of their grandmother, Madeleine L’Engle, titled Becoming Madeleine that FSG BYR published in 2018. It has been received with enormous critical praise—called “skillfully crafted” and “fascinating” by School Library Journal, Becoming Madeleine has been hailed as “a fine tribute to a legendary writer” in a Booklist starred review.

Since 2014, Léna has been recognized by the Scholastic Awards “as an outstanding educator whose dedication, commitment, and guidance are represented by student work selected for national honors.” Mentoring has long been the connective tissue in Léna’s life, whether through her work with at-risk adolescents in Utah, California, and New York—or through her own writing discipline, as fostered by her late grandmother. It was her grandmother who taught Léna to transform the solitary nature of writing into a sacred sense of community, where her art and the art of others can flourish.