Jacqueline Woodson is one of the US's most acclaimed contemporary authors for young people. She first came to attention with her multi-award-winning book Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir in blank verse of her childhood and family life moving between the American South and New York. She was the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2018-19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020.
Brown Girl Dreaming was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award and the Sibert Honor Award. Woodson was recently named the Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation.
Her recent adult book, Another Brooklyn, was a National Book Award finalist. Born on February 12th in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner.
