Jacqueline Woodson

Bio

National Book Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Jacqueline Woodson is one of the nation’s most acclaimed authors writing for children, adolescents, and adults.

Weaving together lyrical language and powerful imagery to create rich and emotional stories, her work explores the complex intersections of race, class, gender, family, and American history. With more than two dozen award-winning books to her credit, her bestsellers include Red at the Bone, the National Book Award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming, and the Newbery Honor-Winning titles: After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way.

While she struggled with reading as a child, she recognized early on that writing made her happiest. An enduring love of narrative drove her to create worlds that reflect the lives of people from all walks of life. The breadth of her storytelling is remarkable, ranging from fiction, to poetry, to picture books—and she moves fluidly between adult fiction and writing for young people.

Among her many accolades, Woodson served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018-2019. In 2020, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the most prestigious international award recognizing authors and illustrators of children’s literature, and then later that year named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow.

Woodson is the founder to the Baldwin Center for the Arts in New York State, an artist residency program providing a safe and nurturing space for Artists of The Global Majority. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

For more information on Jacqueline Woodson, please visit her on Instagram and Twitter and at jacquelinewoodson.com.