Jacqueline Woodson

Before the Ever After is told in verse by ZJ, whose father is a famous footballer and is changing: forgetting words, losing his temper, in pain that nobody can locate. The book never uses the clinical name for what is happening to him, and it is written for readers young enough to be ZJ. Nancy Paulsen Books released it in 2020, and it won the Coretta Scott King Author Award. Jacqueline Woodson has been writing for children and young adults since 1990 and has collected most of what there is to collect: the National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, her memoir in verse of a childhood between Ohio, South Carolina and Brooklyn; a Newbery Honor four times over; the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2020; a MacArthur Fellowship the same year. She served as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and lives in Brooklyn.