Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone - Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx and is being hailed the modern day Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas. Ivan is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering, The Murder Exchange in 2004 and is currently working on his first Young Adult Novel titled In My Shadow.  

His freelance work has appeared in the NY Daily News, the Virginian-Pilot, powerHouse Magazine and on CNN.com, Urban Latino Magazine, SiTV.com, EGRadioOnline.com, and HipHopGame.com to name a few. He was also a radio personality on the number one rated Urban Latino Radio co-hosting a socially conscious weekly program called Rebel Radio. Along these lines he is currently developing a socially conscious news TV series titled Next Stop.  

In his free time he is a youth advocate and motivational speaker having lectured across the country from inner-city schools in the South Bronx and Chicago to Ivy-League Universities such as Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania with his What Is Your Next Stop? Campaign. He has also run a volunteer writing workshop for teens at the Children’s Aid Society’s Next Generation Center in the South Bronx, where he educated teens about the importance of using their voice to raise awareness about the issues that continue to plague their communities.     

Ivan was also named one of the “Top Ten” Latino Authors to watch in 2009 by Latino Stories.com and he credits social media platforms such as My Space and Facebook for helping his work be discovered.