Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature 2018–19

National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson is the sixth writer to hold this position, which is co-sponsored by the Library of Congress, the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Book Award, the NAACP Image Award, and Newbery and Sibert Honors. In 2015, Woodson was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. Her recent adult book, Another Brooklyn, was a National Book Award finalist. 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 three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Book Award winner.

Her books include The Other Side; Each Kindness; Caldecott Honor book, Coming on Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Book Award. Woodson is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature, the winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and was the 2013 U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In March 2018, Penguin Young Readers will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Woodson’s If You Come Softly with a special edition of the beloved story of star-crossed love between an African American teenage boy and his Jewish classmate.

Woodson is preceded as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by Jon Scieszka (2008–9), Katherine Paterson (2010–11), Walter Dean Myers (2012–13), Kate DiCamillo (2014–15), and Gene Luen Yang (2016–17).