When Kianny Antigua’s daughter Mía was born, she had a head full of straight hair. As it began to coil, Antigua started hearing negative comments about Mía’s curls—echoes of the painful messages she herself had absorbed as a child.
“My child was perfect and beautiful,” recalls the senior lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. “I said to myself, ‘This ends here.’”
That moment of maternal resolve became the impetus for Greña / Crazy Hair, Antigua’s bilingual children’s book celebrating curly hair and self‑love.
The book would become the first in Antigua’s series of children's books centered on a young, curly-haired girl named Kiara, a character born from her determination to break cycles of shame around beauty standards. “Kiara is the kid I wish I were,” Antigua says, “Loved as is. Protected. Free.”
Antigua self-published Greña / Crazy Hair before connecting with Sussman Education / Lightswitch Learning, a publisher that shared her vision. Together, they continued the series with bilingual titles including Kiara y el virus / Kiara and the Virus and Kiara se muda a un barrio nuevo / Kiara Moves to a New Neighborhood. Her upcoming release, Kiara y todo lo que migra / Kiara and Everything That Migrates, will be published this year.
Today, Antigua has authored 29 children’s books, many of them bilingual, as well as short stories, poetry collections, bilingual anthologies, microfiction, and a novel. She also works as an independent translator.
Long before Kiara—or even Mía—Antigua’s journey into children’s storytelling began with another child in her life: her cousin’s daughter. One night, unable to sleep, Antigua sat in the dark and began writing Nina Manina, the story of a little girl who fears her aunt’s curly hair until discovering the magic of her own.
Though the story would not be published for more than a decade, the moment was pivotal. “When I had my daughter, her curiosity, joy, and pure sincerity sparked the light I felt that night in the dark,” she says. “And I began to write and publish for children.”
Mía remains a constant muse. “How can I stop being inspired by my child, this energetic, honest, strong, kind human I share my life and heart with?”
The first book in her namesake series, Mía, Esteban y las nuevas palabras / Mía, Esteban and the New Words, grew out of a moment at a fair when Mía kissed a smelly baby goat without hesitation. “That moment, her inability to discriminate, is still present in my core.”
At their heart, Antigua’s stories encourage children to embrace who they are. Her books brim with affirming messages and culturally rich characters shaped by curiosity, kindness, and openness. Her newest book, ¡Mía y un mundo de amistades!, features global friendships with Zuri from Zimbabwe, Freya from Finland, Elías from Ecuador, and Yamama from Yemen.
Where storytelling meets teaching
While Antigua’s body of work spans genres, writing for young readers remains one of her deepest joys.
“It doesn’t cease to amaze me how magnificent and brilliant and endless the brain of a child is,” she says. “They ask brilliant questions, have the absolute best answers, and are masters at solving problems from any perspective. They themselves are the greatest writers, even when incapable yet to grab a pencil.”
This reverence for young minds shapes both her books and her teaching. A writer and storyteller long before becoming a professor, Antigua approaches the classroom much as she approaches the page—with the understanding that stories stay with us. They help us process, accept, learn, and grow.
Whenever possible, she uses storytelling to explain concepts and engage students—techniques she benefited from as an undergraduate. “Relatable stories made a difference for me in terms of both motivation and retention,” she says.
Students say she succeeds.
“Professor Antigua's approach has inspired me as a writer and thinker, leading me to alter the way I convey my messages with the world,” says Fatma Al Arbawi ’27, author and self-publisher of the book The Voiceless Dream. “I learned from Professor Antigua that in order to convey what I needed the world to hear, I needed to immerse the reader in the subject. I did so through feeling. I used her lesson to weave stories … to bring the reader to feel as if they are one and the same as a character, in order for the reader to feel the main lesson of the book.”
Much like the characters in her books, Antigua encourages her students to trust their voices and embrace who they are.
“Professor Antigua took me aside after an activity and flat [out] told me that all my first answers were correct, but I kept second guessing myself and getting the final answer wrong,” says Benjamin Mattern ’28. “That pushed me even now not to second guess myself in academics. She was right.”
Antigua also brings her creative work to campus through readings and collaborations. She recently spoke with students in professor Mauricio Acuña’s course Rewriting the World, sharing short stories and insights into her writing process. She has also partnered with Quisqueyanos @Dartmouth (QU@D), a student organization for those of Dominican heritage, and the Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color, to share her children’s literature with students and community members.
Beyond campus, Antigua travels to schools around the country five to 15 times a year. She calls herself a “very lucky human” for the opportunity to share her stories in classrooms and auditoriums, spaces where young imaginations come alive.
For Antigua, writing for children is more than craft—it’s a calling.
“Since I didn’t grow up listening to someone reading me books about self-love, I am working on learning my worth as well,” she says. “I hope children learn to love themselves before the world tries to teach them to hate themselves—or others—for being different.”