Poets & Writers Theater

“I had a teacher who said, ‘Instead of lying, write it down. Cause it’s fiction. It’s not a lie anymore,’” says Jacqueline Woodson. “I feel like that’s one of the things I go back to, is that moment where my stories became legitimized.” In this episode of BookTube, Woodson sits down with CeCe Ewing, Ebony and Denice Nuñez, and Elaine Welteroth to discuss writing and reading, as well as gender and queer identity.

“It was Dre who once said, / You lose something every day / Your mind on the way to the store / The floor on the way to your mind…” In this Ours Poetica video, Jacqueline Woodson reads “You Lose Something Every Day,” a poem from Willie Perdomo’s collection The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Books, 2019). 

“When I was thinking about Red at the Bone, one thing I knew I wanted to talk about was class—economic class—especially in the Black community, and history.” Jacqueline Woodson talks about her new novel, Red at the Bone (Riverhead Books, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and reads the poem from her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014) that she calls “the seed” of the novel.

“Even when I’m writing for young people, I really try to get into the emotional side of who they are...” At the 2016 National Book Festival, Jacqueline Woodson discusses her novel Another Brooklyn (HarperCollins, 2016), which is shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award in fiction. Woodson is featured in “A Great Good” by Rigoberto González in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It's important that the criticism be constructive because otherwise it's destructive.” In a video for Big Think, Jacqueline Woodson explains the three stages of critique that are part of her writing process. Woodson speaks about her most recent novel, Another Brooklyn (Amistad, 2016), in “A Great Good” by Rigoberto González in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"Brown Girl Dreaming is in verse because that's the way memory comes." Jacqueline Woodson speaks about her autobiographical novel, published by Nancy Paulsen Books last August, winner of the 2014 National Book Award in young people’s literature. Woodson was named the new young people’s poet laureate by the Poetry Foundation last week.