Carole Boston Weatherford

Carole Boston Weatherford grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and began writing poetry in first grade, when she dictated a poem to her mother. She is the author of a number of picture books for children, including The Sound That Jazz Makes, an NAACP Image Award finalist; Juneteenth Jamboree, which appears on the Black Books Galore! list of Best Books for Girls; and Grandma and Me, a Black Issues Book Review Children's Paperback Best. Her poetry is collected in The Tar Baby on the Soapbox and the prizewinning volume, The Tan Chanteuse, and appears in such anthologies as The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury and In Daddy's Arms I Am Tall, winner of a Coretta Scott King Award for illustration. Her poems have also appeared in such journals as Calyx, Greensboro Review, Callaloo and African-American Review. Carole is the recipient of a 1995 North Carolina Arts Council fellowship and the Furious Flower Poetry Prize from James Madison University. A columnist for the Greensboro News & Record, her articles and essays have appeared in Education Week, Christian Science Monitor, Essence, American Legacy and The Washington Post. Her work as an editorial writer for The Chronicle won a North Carolina Press Association award. With an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an M.A. in publications design from the University of Baltimore, Carole conducts performances and residencies at schools and cultural institutions. She has taught at Salem College, High Point University, and Guilford Technical Community College. She resides in High Point, North Carolina, with her husband, Ronald, and their two children.