Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming, will speak on Tuesday, April 5, at 5:30 p.m. in the Gifford Auditorium, Huntington Beard Crouse Hall, on the Syracuse University Campus. Her talk, titled “Brown Girl Dreaming,” after her award winning memoir, is free and open to the public. Free parking will be available in the University Avenue Garage, and CART open captioning will be provided. Syracuse University’s School of Education and Syracuse University Humanities Center are co-sponsors of this event, and it is part of the School of Education’s Douglas Biklen Landscape on Urban Education Lecture Series.
Brown Girl Dreaming, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. In this talk, she will guide the audience through the vivid poems from her book, sharing what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s,living with the remnants of Jim Crow, her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement, and the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child.
Woodson is the author of more than two dozen books for young readers. She is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a recipient of the NAACP Image Award, winner of the 2014 National Book Award, a three-time National Book Award finalist, a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and was recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. A selection of Ms. Woodson’s books will be available for purchase by credit card or check at the event.