Award-winning children’s author, former college basketball star, and literary agent, Jesse Byrd, talks to his agent, Regina Brooks of Serendipity Literary, about the inspiration behind his new middle grade graphic novel, Dream Warriors, and how he sees this book fitting into his mission to bring more diversity to children’s media.

Dream Warriors follows a group of heroes who are, essentially, keeping people safe from their bad dreams. What was the inspiration for the book?

I found out my great grandmother was indigenous American. Talking more about that and the dream catcher itself, I was like, what if you personify that? If the dream catcher is meant to catch these dreams, what if it was a person or a being or a spirit who’s running around catching all of the bad dreams, and it’s more like an action sequence? I realized quickly that a picture book wouldn’t be nearly enough real estate for the world building I had in mind. That made me realize that a graphic novel might be a better medium.

Dream Warriors features a diverse cast of characters, allowing young readers of color to see themselves centered in an adventurous, legacy-building narrative. Why did this matter to you?

There are just so few legacy characters of color. And we need a full spectrum of storytelling. We need to talk about different elements of the Black experience, but also sometimes you just need to center a kid going through something who is Black while elevating and celebrating it.

In addition to Dream Warriors, your company (Moonbeam, Literary & Media), your nonprofit (Each Story Matters), and the publisher of Dream Warriors (Paw Prints Publishing--whom you do a lot with) are built around the importance of representation and access in children’s literature and media.

There are so many stories out there that deserve a fighting chance to be told. I mean, the world is so vast, and experiences are so vast. And there’s no single person or group of people who can really speak for everybody’s experience. It’s one of the things that lit me up when I first started out as an author. Then, after editing other peoples’ children’s book manuscripts…I got really jazzed up about championing their stories. Now, through Moonbeam [the literary agency I co-founded] we represent 30 authors and illustrators from 19 different countries across the globe, all of them in the children's media space. But one of the things I’m most proud of is that we’ve created a workshop that turns kids ages seven through 11 into published authors. In the last three years, we’ve published 400 kids. When we go to these book events, and they’re signing their debut, and I see their faces, it’s like, if this is all I’ve done in my life, I can be proud of that.

For the purposes of clarity, this conversation has been condensed from its original version.

Want to dig deeper into the world of Dream Warriors? For a limited time, you can enter to win a copy of Jesse Byrd's Dream Warriors 1: A New World!