Two-time National Book Award Finalist Deborah Wiles will be visiting students in Thatcher Hall on Wednesday, April 12.
"I am really excited for the students to meet and interact with Deborah Wiles," said Kaitlin Ward, librarian for pre-K to eighth-grade students. "Her books are a wonderful addition to our library because they not only talk about relatable topics for the students but also engage readers with history. I personally have read several of her books and fell in love with her writing style. There's something for everyone with her books."
Wiles was born in Alabama into an Air Force family and spent her growing-up summers in a small Mississippi town with an extended family full of Southern characters. Today she writes about them and they live on in her stories. She has written essays for various magazines and newspapers since 1986, has been a magazine managing editor, has conceived and facilitated grant-funded oral history programs, has been a radio program host, and has written seven books for young readers and their grown-ups.
Wiles is the first children’s book author to be named Writer-in-Residence at Thurber House, James Thurber’s boyhood home in Columbus, Ohio. She received the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award from the New York Public Library and the Keats Foundation in 2002 and is the 2004 recipient of the PEN/Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship.
She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and taught “Writing Techniques for Teachers” at Towson University in Maryland until she moved to Atlanta in 2004. She also taught writing in the MFA programs at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Vermont College. Today she teaches writers in workshops, residencies, and conferences across the U.S. and around the world.
Wiles has written two picture books: “One Wide Sky,” a Children’s Book of the Month Club selection and “Freedom Summer,” winner of numerous awards including dual Ezra Jack Keats Awards and the Coretta Scott King/Steptoe award for illustrator Jerome Lagarrigue. A new Aurora County novel, a picture book about Robert Kennedy and a picture book about Rachel Carson are in production.
Wiles has written three novels about growing up in the south. They are known as the Aurora County Trilogy. “Love, Ruby Lavender” was an ALA Notable Children’s Book, a Children’s Book Sense 76 Pick and a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing. The book was nominated for 32 state book award reading lists which were voted on by children. Deborah’s novel “Each Little Bird That Sings” won the Bank Street Fiction Award for 2005, a Golden Kite Honor Award, the California Young Reader Medal, was a 2005 E.B. White Award winner and is a 2005 National Book Award finalist. “The Aurora County All-Stars” was a SIBA Book Award finalist and completes the Aurora County trilogy.
Wiles’ newest project is called “The Sixties Trilogy: Three Novels of the 1960s.” Book one, “Countdown 1962,” was published in May 2010 by Scholastic Press. Book two, “Revolution 1964,” was published in 2014 and is a Golden Kite Award winner, a Jane Addams Peace Award honor book, a NAACP Image Award finalist, and a 2014 National Book Award Finalist.
Wiles teaches teachers and writers around the country and writes from her home in Atlanta, Ga.
For more information about the visit from Deborah Wiles, contact Kaitlin Ward, ELA-8 librarian, at kward@darlingtonschool.org.
