Virginia Hamilton

Hello! My name is Virginia Hamilton, and I am a storyteller. I was born on March 12th, 1934, in a small town called Yellow Springs, Ohio. My love for stories came from my family. My grandfather, Levi Perry, had escaped from slavery in Virginia as a child and traveled the Underground Railroad to freedom. His tales of bravery and survival were incredible to hear. Our home was always filled with his stories, and my mother, a wonderful storyteller herself, would gather us children to listen. I grew up on a farm surrounded by a big, loving family, and those stories of our past, our struggles, and our triumphs became a part of me. They taught me that our history was important and that everyone's story deserved to be told.

When I grew up, I knew I wanted to be a writer. During the 1950s, I studied at Antioch College and Ohio State University, soaking up all the books I could. Then, I packed my bags and moved to the bustling streets of New York City. It was an exciting place to be! I worked different jobs to support myself, but I always made time to write. It was there I met another writer, a poet named Arnold Adoff, who I married in 1960. He understood my passion for writing and encouraged me. In 1967, my very first book, 'Zeely,' was published. It was a story about a tall, proud girl who teaches another girl about self-worth and heritage. I was so proud when it won an award, and it gave me the courage to keep writing stories that I felt were missing from the library shelves—stories about Black children and their rich inner lives.

I kept writing and writing. I wrote about history, mystery, and folklore. I called my work 'liberation literature,' because I wanted my stories to help free the minds of my readers and show them the beauty and strength of African American culture. Then, in 1974, I published a book that changed my life, called 'M. C. Higgins, the Great.' It's about a boy named Mayo Cornelius Higgins who lives in the Appalachian Mountains. He dreams of saving his family from a giant spoil heap, which is a big pile of waste left over from a coal mining company that threatens his home. In 1975, something amazing happened. 'M. C. Higgins, the Great' won both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award! No author had ever won both of those huge awards for the same book before. I felt like I was on top of the world. It showed me that people were ready to listen to the stories I had to tell.

I continued to receive wonderful honors for my work. In 1992, I was given the Hans Christian Andersen Award, which is a prize given to authors from all over the world. A few years later, in 1995, I received a MacArthur Fellowship—sometimes called a 'genius grant'—which was a great honor. I wrote over 40 books in my lifetime, and each one felt like a piece of my heart. I lived to be 67 years old, and though my time for telling stories in person came to an end, my books live on. I hope that when you read them, you feel a connection to the past and see the magic in your own family's history, just like I did.