Mark Oshiro

Mark Oshiro is an American author known for young adult fiction including Anger Is a Gift, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award, and for the middle-grade novel Each of Us a Desert, published as part of Rick Riordan Presents, the imprint Riordan created to publish stories by and about traditionally underrepresented cultures, mythologies, and communities, giving other authors a platform within a Riordan-branded line while writing their own original material. Before becoming a novelist, Oshiro was well known online for the media-review project Mark Reads and Mark Watches, in which they wrote detailed, unspoiled reactions to popular book series and television shows for a large online following, building a substantial readership years before their fiction career began. Their fiction frequently addresses questions of identity, mental health, and cultural heritage, drawing on personal experience growing up queer and Latino in the United States. Oshiro continues to write across young adult and middle-grade fiction and remains active in online literary communities, having built a career bridging internet-based media criticism and traditionally published fiction.