Carole Boston Weatherford

Carole Boston Weatherford (she/her) has written more than 70 books, including Kin: Rooted in Hope, illustrated by Jeffery Boston Weatherford (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2023), winner of a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Poetry; Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by Floyd Cooper(Carolrhoda Books, 2021), winner of a Coretta Scott King Award; BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom, illustrated by Michele Wood (Candlewick, 2020), winner of a Newbery Medal Honor; Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America, illustrated by Jamey Christoph (Albert Whitman & Company, 2015), winner of an NAACP Image Award; Birmingham, 1963 (Wordsong, 2007), winner of a Jefferson Cup and a Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award; and The Sound That Jazz Makes, illustrated by Eric Velasquez (Walker & Company, 2000), winner of a Carter G. Woodson Award from the National Council for the Social Studies.

Weatherford is the 2025-2026 Young People’s Poet Laureate. Of her work, Weatherford says, “My mission is to mine the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles that center on African American resistance, resilience, remarkability, rejoicing and remembrance.” Inspired by oral traditions and African American heritage, she sometimes collaborates with her son, rapper and illustrator Jeffery Boston Weatherford. 

Carole Boston Weatherford’s books have received numerous awards, including multiple Caldecott Honors and Coretta Scott King Honors, and her career achievements have been recognized with a Ragan-Rubin Award for Literary Achievement from the North Carolina English Teachers Association, a North Carolina Award for Literature, and induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned a BA from American University, an MA from the University of Baltimore, and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. A retired Fayetteville State University professor, she lives in Maryland.