This story is a follow-up to "Children's Publishing Reckons with Sexual Harassment in Its Ranks," published online January 3. 

Ishta Mercurio was making small talk during the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ (SCBWI) annual conference when she says the man she was chatting with, a successful children’s book illustrator, reached over and touched her hair.

“He fondled a lock of my hair and leaned in to my ear and said, ‘You’re kinky, aren’t you?’” says Mercurio (who requested that she not to be identified in this story published online January 3 and has subsequently asked to be named).

The exchange, which happened in 2012 at SCBWI’s winter conference in New York and was witnessed by a friend of Mercurio, left her feeling “horrified” and “disgusted.” The illustrator, David Díaz, was a member of SCBWI’s board and a faculty member at the conference.

Still, Mercurio, who at that point in her career was an unpublished aspiring children’s book author, did not complain about the incident at the time. However, in December 2017, Díaz resigned from his position on the SCBWI’s board, after sexual harassment complaints emerged about his past.

Díaz has illustrated numerous books for children, including Newbery Honor winner The Wanderer, by Sharon Creech. He won the 1995 Caldecott Medal for his illustration of the picture book Smoky Night (Harcourt, 1994) by Eve Bunting.

The 2012 event wasn’t the first time Mercurio had met him—a mutual acquaintance introduced them at the 2011 conference, and Díaz had made a milder but still suggestive comment to her then. After their 2012 interaction, Mercurio wanted to avoid Díaz, but she wasn’t about to make public accusations against someone who was a conference faculty member.

“Editors want to work with people they can work with. No one wants to be that nightmare author,” says Mercurio, who has a picture book coming out in 2019. “I didn’t want [a sexual harassment claim] to stop me from becoming the writer I wanted to become in order to thrive in this industry and in order to succeed in this industry.”

She summoned the confidence to come forward this October, encouraged by online conversations about sexual harassment and children’s publishing. Mercurio reported her experiences to the executive director of SCBWI, Lin Oliver, who told her that Díaz had been warned in the past about such behavior, though after Mercurio’s interactions with him.

Díaz apologized to Mercurio via email, and she accepted his apology. Satisfied with that outcome, Mercurio believed the matter had been laid to rest, and she doesn’t know whether there were any further allegations that prompted Díaz’s resignation in December.

Oliver declined to comment about Díaz’s resignation.

Mercurio is left feeling exposed and with lingering questions about how the matter was handled.

“If I’m the only one choosing to have a voice in this conversation, how is the public going to perceive this?” she says. “Keeping it behind closed doors just doesn’t help anyone.”

Drew Himmelstein is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn.