Jacqueline Woodson
On October 18, Jacqueline Woodson—MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and author of the acclaimed Brown Girl Dreaming, Another Brooklyn, and Red at the Bone—arrived from Brooklyn to take center stage in Student Union Ballroom B. There, she accepted the Steinbeck Award from Daniel Rivers, executive director of the Cox Center. The award completed an event co-sponsored by the Center for Literary Arts, featuring Woodson in conversation with Stanford professor Michele Elam. Like past awardees Miller, Terkel, Hosseini, Bridges, Jiménez—and Steinbeck himself—Woodson has endured book bans in America. She spoke of “the war on literature,” and of the courage of those who risked their jobs by defending books. “Every day,” said Woodson, “I’m asking myself, What can we do to support librarians? What can we do to support teachers?”
