Jacqueline Woodson
New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Woodson has written over 30 books for young adults, middle-graders, and adults. In her New York Times bestselling memoir, “Brown Girl Dreaming,” Woodson shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. The book was awarded the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, an NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Medal Award.
Other honors include the New York Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year “Red at the Bone,” and the 2016 National Book Award Finalist for “Another Brooklyn.”
Woodson will discuss her new books for children. "The World Belonged to Us," available May 2022, is an homage to her own childhood and the celebration of the joy and freedom of summer in the city. "The Year We Learned to Fly," available January 2022, is the highly anticipated companion to “The Day You Begin” and features a bored, stuck-inside brother and sister whose grandmother advises them to: “Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing.”
One of the country’s most acclaimed writers, Woodson is a four-time Newbery Honoree; a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner; the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; Sibert Medal Award; National Book Award; NAACP Image Award; Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement; Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award; and a recipient of the highest international recognition given to a children’s author, the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2018, she won the Children's Literature Legacy Award (then known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award) and was named the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
Woodson also gives stirring lectures that delve into the inspiration behind her books and explore important issues of race, gender, and bullying.
