Ep. 36: Conflict: Jacqueline Woodson on Organic Discovery and How Picture Books Are the Ultimate Teacher

10/06/2025 56 min Episodio 36
Ep. 36: Conflict: Jacqueline Woodson on Organic Discovery and How Picture Books Are the Ultimate Teacher

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Episode Synopsis

Here are some highlights from our episode with the #1 NYTimes bestselling, National Book Award-winning, former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson:
 

Starting stories with questions
Writing "quiet" books that speak loudly
The wisdom of young people, especially before that wisdom is silenced
Deconstructing “show don’t tell”
How to write about complicated topics with honesty and hope
Separating yourself as a writer from the character and the story
The questions Jackie is wrestling with right now
Some things that have (and haven’t) changed about publishing

 
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
 
Links from the episode:

Mychal Threet’s “The Library Is for Everyone” shirt via Out of Print
The Baldwin Fellowship Program
Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson
Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson
The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson
After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

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