Angela Shelf Medearis

Born in Hampton, Virginia, Angela Shelf Medearis earned her BA from Texas State University. She has written approximately 100 children’s books, including the poetry collection Skin Deep and Other Teenage Reflections (2014), Daisy and the Doll (2000), Poppa’s Itchy Christmas (1998), We Eat Dinner in the Bathtub (1996), Dare to Dream: Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights Movement (1994), and The Singing Man (1994). She also wrote the cookbooks Entertaining Ideas from the African-American Kitchen (1997), A Kwanzaa Celebration cookbook (1995), and The African-American Kitchen (1994). In both her cookbooks and children’s books, Medearis’s interests lie in providing an African American perspective.

Medearis won the first Teddy Award. She has produced Children’s Radio Bookmobile for the University of Texas at Austin, curated African American exhibits for the George Washington Carver Museum, and consulted for the textbook publishers Scholastic, Macmillan, and Scott Foresman.