Arriel Vinson is a Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. Her debut YA novel-in-verse, Under the Neon Lights, is a 2026 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, a 2026 Black Caucus of ALA/School Library Journal Fiction Honor, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp selection, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection. Arriel earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and is a Tin House YA Scholar, Highlights Foundation scholarship recipient, and Walter Grant recipient. Her sophomore YA novel, If This World Were Mine, is forthcoming on January 26, 2027.

Before becoming an author, Arriel was a publishing professional, creating marketing campaigns and spearheading digital communications at Poets & Writers, Catapult, and Macmillan. She focused her efforts on diverse authors and titles, forging partnerships that targeted readers who valued BIPOC stories. As an editor at the now-defunct Catapult magazine, Arriel honed emerging and established writers’ voices, editing personal essays and short stories.

She is also an educator with over eight years of experience teaching teen and adult writing workshops. What began as a love for mentorship with Girls Write Now, a New York-based nonprofit that nurtures a love of writing, blossomed into her teaching at the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The Loft Literary Center, the Solstice MFA, and bookstores and organizations across the country.

She is currently an instructor at Butler University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, and the Managing Director of Project Loudmouth, a 501(c)(3) in Indianapolis that brings diverse authors/illustrators to Title I schools.

You can connect with her on social media at @arriwrites and find her work at arriwrites.com.