Content Warning: This section contains discussions of race, racism, racial identity, anti-gay bias, gun violence and fatalities, wrongful conviction/imprisonment, and the foster system.

Jacqueline Woodson has been writing books in the children’s, middle grade, young adult, and adult categories for nearly 35 years. Throughout her long and prolific career, she has garnered widespread recognition and awards for her books in each one of these categories, but she has also been the target of censorship.

Woodson’s novels often explore themes of Black identity, gender, and the inherent challenges of growing up Black in the United States. She has been recognized as a voice of her generation because her work speaks to the experiences and feelings shared by so many people. Woodson was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2015 and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in 2018. She has also received multiple Coretta Scott King, Newbery, and Jane Addams awards, all of which recognize excellence in specific areas of children’s literature. In 2015, she won both the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work in Literature after the publication of Brown Girl Dreaming, a novel-in-verse.