Hailed by Huffington Post as a “master of picture book nonfiction,” Carole Boston Weatherford is a Newbery Honor author, New York Times best-seller and two-time NAACP Image Award winner. Since her 1995 debut, she has published 50-plus books.
The Baltimore-born daughter of educators, Carole at age six dictated her first poem to her mother. Her father, a high school printing teacher, published some of her early poems on the press in his classroom. By middle school, she had transferred from an all-black public school to an exclusive private school. There, her eighth-grade teacher wrongfully accused her of plagiarism. That slight left her determined to use her writing to amplify marginalized voices. Now, her words stand as monuments to icons and unsung heroes alike.
Growing up, Carole found few Black characters in books. But when she became a mother, she shifted from writing for adults to creating children’s literature. Family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles inform her poetry, nonfiction and historical fiction.
Carole has celebrated music in books like Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane; The Legendary Miss Lena Horne; The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip Hop; How Sweet the Sound: The Story of Amazing Grace; By and By: Charles Albert Tindley, the Father of Gospel Music; and R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. She collaborated with her son, illustrator Jeffery Weatherford, on the verse novel You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen.
With an M.F.A. in creative writing from University of North Carolina-Greensboro and an M.A. in publications design from the University of Baltimore, Carole is a professor at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. Her career achievements have been recognized with the Nonfiction Award from the Children’s Book Guild, the North Carolina Literature Award, the Ragan-Rubin Award from North Carolina English Teachers Association and a place in the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. She is a life member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
