Storytime with the Poet Laureate of the Pandemic

Carmen Centeno is a Library Services Specialist with the Miami-Dade Public Library System. She has over 20 years of experience in youth services, programming and general librarianship> She also manages the Library’s local author series and fair, which won a 2020 National Association of Counties achievement award. Ms. Centeno has also received the SEFLIN Summit award for developing programming for infants and the visually impaired, and has represented the Library internationally hosting early literacy workshops at libraries in Medellin, Colombia and Madrid, Spain. She holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from Florida State University.  

Kitty O’Meara is a lifelong writer and artist and a former teacher of middle school writing and literature. She also has been a hospital and hospice chaplain and is currently a spiritual director. And the People Stayed Home is her first print book and has been co-illustrated by Stefano Di Cristofaro and Paul Pereda. Stefano Di Cristofaro is an illustrator and designer. He has illustrated the children’s books Conejo y Conejo, Guachipira va de viaje, and La Sayona y otros cuentos de espantos. Paul Pereda is an illustrator who has primarily worked in video game development and trading card games with clients such as Disney, Nickelodeon, Atari, and MTV. In her poem about the pandemic, quarantine, and the future And the People Stayed Home (Tra Publishing) O’Meara suggests there is meaning to be found in our shared experience of the coronavirus. Moreover, she conveys an optimistic message about the possibility of profound healing for people and the planet.  Her words encourage us to look within, listen deeply, and connect with ourselves and the earth in order to heal. Her words, written in March 2020 and shared on Facebook, immediately resonated nationally and internationally and were widely circulated on social media, covered in mainstream news media, and inspired an outpouring of creativity from musicians, dancers, artists, filmmakers, and more. O, The Oprah Magazine, called O’Meara ” the poet laureate of the pandemic […] The poem has become shorthand for a silver-linings perspective during the coronavirus outbreak—the hope that something good