Biography and photo provided by Scholastic, Inc.

I was born on the outer edge of the Great Depression and into the flat, rural landscape of Ohio farm country. My mother's family had lived there since the late 1850s when my grandfather, Levi Perry, escaped from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Both of my parents were enthusiastic readers and gifted storytellers. My mother could take a slice of fiction floating around the family and polish it into a saga.

While growing up, I was very active, participating in public speaking contests, athletics, and school government. I received a scholarship to Antioch College in my hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then went on to the Ohio State University at Columbus and the New School for Social Research in New York. There I met and married poet and writer Arnold Adoff in 1960. I published Zeely, my first book for children, in 1967. After 15 years in New York, I had found my way, and I decided to come home to Ohio.

I love my hometown. My husband and I built a house on the last few acres of my family farm. Here on this land is the best place for me to write. I have generations of memories. Being an Ohioan means that I am akin to the landscape and the Ohio sky. All of it feeds my heart and mind, and my writing.

There is no clear way to explain how it is that I never cease having new ideas for books nor the desire to work so intensely at writing them. But as raising a family and keeping up a working farm with my father was my mother's focus and heart, so writing is mine. It is what I do. I will continue to explore the known, the remembered, and the imagined, the literary triad of which every story is made.

Virginia Hamilton has won nearly every major award in her field, including the 1992 Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the most prestigious international award in children's literature. She has also won the Newbery Medal, three Newbery Honor Awards, two Coretta Scott King Awards, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and was the first children's author to receive a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1995.

On Tuesday, February 19, 2002, Virginia Hamilton passed away in Dayton, Ohio. The cause of death was breast cancer. Hamilton was 65 years old. She was known around the world for her contributions to children's literature. She has written over 35 books, and many celebrate the African-American experience in America. Some of her most popular include The People Could Fly; The Planet of Junior Brown; M.C. Higgins, the Great; Bluish; Cousins; and the Dies Drear Chronicles.