Great Books, Great Conversations: An Evening with Jacqueline Woodson ’16 (Hon.)

In this newly launched series, we will be joined by Jacqueline Woodson ’16 (Hon.), New York Times bestselling author who will be discussing her works and writing process with poet and author Jacqueline Jones LaMon, professor and vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.

This Great Books, Great Conversations event will be moderated by avid reader, Sybile Val ’99, MD.

Register now to receive the Zoom Link.

This event is sponsored by the Pleasures in Reading and Literature endowment.

About the Speakers

Jacqueline Woodson ’16 (Hon.)

is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, which also received the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. She is the author of dozens of 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 three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Year We Learned to Fly, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me; 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 Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.

Ms. LaMon’s work has appeared in a wide variety of publications such as POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Narrative Magazine, Ninth Letter, Mythium, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Noted by the NAACP in the category of Outstanding Literary Work, Poetry, Ms. LaMon is the recipient of fellowships from the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, The Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, the Yaddo Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many others. She spent her childhood in Brooklyn, New York, and served as board member and past president of Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. A member of the National Council for Graywolf Press, Ms. LaMon has taught for over a decade in the multi-genre MFA program at Adelphi University, where she currently holds the position of Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.