Join the Children Chatting with Authors Podcast as they interview award-winning author Maulik Pancholy about his book The Best At It and about being an author, actor, and activist.
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Author Maulik Pancholy:
Recognizable from his roles on shows such as 30 Rock, Phineas and Ferb, and Sanjay and Craig, Maulik Pancholy is an award-winning actor, author, and activist whose career has spanned hit television shows, animated series, the Broadway stage, and films.
In 2019, Maulik released his first book, a middle-grade novel titled The Best at It, which was a 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection, included in Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books of 2019, and listed as one of Evanston Public Library’s 101 Great Books for Kids. It has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist. Drawn from his own experience, The Best at It is about a twelve-year-old, gay, Indian American boy coming into his own. It has been called at once, “exuberant and heart-wrenching.”
Maulik was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014 to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). As a Commissioner, he co-founded the anti-bullying campaign, acttochange.org, which he continues to Chair today.
For his advocacy on behalf of the AAPI and LGBTQIA+ communities, he has received an Asian American Arts Alliance Award, the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award, and was named to Out Magazine’s Top 100 list. He delivers keynote addresses on the topics of diversity and inclusion—and the importance of telling our own stories—in corporate settings as well as at universities and schools across the country.
