Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is a poet, children's book author, playwright, producer, and the author of over a dozen books, including Booked (2016), The Crossover (2014), He Said, She Said (2014), Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band (2011), and Crush: Love Poems for Teenagers (2008). The Crossover won the Newbery Award Medal and Coretta Scott King Honor Award.

Since 2006, Alexander's Book-in-a-Day writing and publishing program for middle school and high school students has guided thousands of student authors in dozens of schools across the US, Canada, and the Caribbean. He regularly conducts creative writing workshops and performances in middle and high schools. Most recently, he served as guest author for the Grand Cayman Libraries Summer Reading Programme, poet-in-residence at Foxcroft Girls Boarding School in Virginia, and poet-in-residence for Loudoun County Virginia's year-long, award-winning, Try Poetry 2010 initiative. In the summer of 2010, Alexander created the Book-in-a-Day International Fellowship, and took eight writer/educators on a creative journey to Tuscany in Italy, and eight to Brazil in 2012.

Alexander served on the advisory board for Nikki Giovanni's project, 100 Best African American Poems. He is currently the poet laureate of LitWorld, a literacy organization dedicated to supporting the development of literacy in the world's most vulnerable communities. His papers are held at George Washington University's Gelman Library.