Jason Reynolds Discusses Coach with Jay Ellis
BPL Presents and Greenlight Bookstore are proud to welcome Jason Reynolds, the 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, as well as the recipient of a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and multiple Coretta Scott King honors! Reynolds visits Brooklyn to launch his new book Coach, the companion to his award-winning and New York Times bestselling Track series. Meet Coach—before he was the man who gave caring yet firm-handed guidance to Ghost, Lu, Patina, and Sunny on the Defenders track team, he was little Otie Brody, a young boy striving to come into his own as a track star while facing upheaval at home. Actor Jay Ellis (Insecure, Top Gun: Maverick, The Game) joins Reynolds for a conversation and audience Q&A, followed by a book signing.
Coach and others will be available for purchase courtesy of Greenlight Bookstore. Pick-up your order at the event.
PARTICIPANTS
Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a 2024 MacArthur Fellow, a Kirkus Award winner, a UK Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, an Odyssey Award Winner and two-time honoree, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors, a Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He was also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); When I Was the Greatest; The Boy in the Black Suit; Stamped; As Brave as You; For Every One; the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu, and Coach); Look Both Ways; Stuntboy, in the Meantime; Stuntboy, In-Between Time; Miles Morales Suspended; Ain’t Burned All the Bright (recipient of the Caldecott Honor) and My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (both cowritten with Jason Griffin); Twenty-Four Seconds from Now...; and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. His debut picture book, There Was a Party for Langston, won a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com. Photo credit Adedayo "Dayo" Kosoko
Jay Ellis was born in Sumter, South Carolina, to a military family, Jay Ellis spent his childhood inventing new personas for every town he landed in. Too many to count. After college, he realized the NBA wasn’t good enough for him and he didn’t want to crush other players’ dreams as he dominated the league so he decided to take his one-man show to Hollywood, where he got his start on BET’s The Game. Now an accomplished actor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, Ellis is best known for his role as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure, for which he won an NAACP Image Award. He appeared alongside Tom Cruise, flying jets through the skies, in the Oscar-nominated film in Top Gun: Maverick. When he’s not on set filming he spends the majority of his days cleaning up the messes that his daughter’s imaginary friend “Jack” made. Karma.
