Honorees

Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016. Dr. Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead the National Library, was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama on February 24, 2016, and her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate later that year on July 13.

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Her vision for America’s national library, connecting all Americans to the Library of Congress, redefined and modernized the Library’s mission: to engage, inspire, and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.

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Prior to her service as Librarian, Dr. Hayden was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, since 1993. She was the deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993, an assistant professor of library and information science at the University of Pittsburgh from 1987 to 1991 and library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1982 to 1987. She began her career with the Chicago Public Library as the young adult services coordinator from 1979 to 1982 and as a library associate and children’s librarian from 1973 to 1979.

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Dr. Hayden was president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling. Hayden received a B.A. from Roosevelt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

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Among her numerous civic and professional memberships and awards, Dr. Hayden is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jon Anderson was named President and Publisher of the Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division in October 2013. Mr. Anderson joined the company as Executive Vice President and Publisher of the Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division in January 2009. 

Mr. Anderson is responsible for the overall operations for the Children’s Division, including editorial, design, production, publicity, marketing and licensing activities, while overseeing a publishing portfolio that serves every category of the children’s publishing business from toddlers to teens, while maintaining an extensive backlist that includes numerous Newbery, Caldecott and National Book Award winners.  

Prior to joining Simon & Schuster, Mr. Anderson was the President and Publisher of Running Press Book Publishers, a division of Perseus Books Group.  Before that, Mr. Anderson was at Penguin Putnam, Inc., where he was Vice President and Publisher of Price Stern Sloan and Penguin’s DreamWorks publishing program. Prior to Penguin, Mr. Anderson spent seventeen years at B. Dalton Booksellers/Barnes & Noble in positions ranging from sales clerk while in high school to head of the chain’s childrens’ buying division.

Mr. Anderson is an active member of the children’s book publishing community, and serves on the board of the National Coalition Against Censorship.  

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He is also the author of many children’s books under the pseudonym William Boniface, with cumulative sales of more than two million copies. He lives in Connecticut.

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-American author and journalist. Born and raised in Sydney, she is a graduate of Sydney University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The National Times in Australia, and for a decade as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, covering conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. With her husband, Tony Horwitz, she won the Overseas Press Club Award for best coverage of the first Gulf War.

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She is the author of three nonfiction works and six novels, including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, "March," and the 2022 bestseller, "Horse," which was removed from the Naval Academy Library in a purge of books celebrating diversity and inclusion. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, was on banned lists for several school libraries. Among her awards are the 2025 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

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 She has served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and a visiting researcher at New College, Oxford. In 2011, she delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and in 2016, she was named an Officer in the Order of Australia for services to literature and indigenous literacy. Her most recent book is the 2025 memoir, Memorial Days.

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She has two sons and lives on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and in Sydney, Australia.

John Palfrey is the President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new media are changing learning and education. Prior to joining the Foundation, he served as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover. Palfrey is the board chair of the United States Impact Investing Alliance; co-chairs the Disability and Inclusion Forum’s Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy; and serves on the board of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and serves on the governance council. And he is the former board chair of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Palfrey holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Harvard College. Palfrey is an accomplished author; his most recent book is Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online, which he co-authored with Eszter Hargittai. His other books include Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education and Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, co-authored with Urs Gasser.