Virginia Hamilton

Virginia Esther Hamilton was a bestselling and award-winning young adult and children's fiction author. She was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1934, and grew up in a large extended family with a rich cultural heritage. Her grandfather was brought to Ohio via the Underground Railroad, which played a significant role in shaping her identity and writing.

Hamilton received a full scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs and later transferred to the Ohio State University in Columbus, where she majored in literature and creative writing. After moving to New York City in 1958, she pursued her dream of becoming a published writer, studying fiction writing at the New School for Social Research under Hiram Haydn. It was in New York that she met her husband, poet Arnold Adoff, with whom she had two children.

Hamilton's writing career spanned over four decades, during which she produced 41 books in multiple genres, including picture books, folktales, mysteries, science fiction, realistic novels, and biography. She was the first Black writer to receive the Newbery Medal and the first children's writer to be named a MacArthur Fellow. She also won the National Book Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Hamilton's work, which she described as "Liberation Literature," often explored themes of memory, tradition, and generational legacy, with a particular focus on the African American experience.