Fun, Kid Friendly Bio

Kwame Alexander has written 45 books, one of them in Panera Bread, several of them on airplanes and in hotel rooms, and three of them in a penthouse with huge windows in London. He lived in an apartment building that used to be a hotel which used to have a restaurant that Langston Hughes (Kwame's favorite poet) was a busboy in. His new house has a blue couch, a large painting of Nikki Giovanni, and a bunch of awards—including his Newbery Medal, NAACP Image Award, Emmy Award, which he keeps in the guest bathroom so all his guests can see them up close. When he’s not writing books like The Crossover, The Mighty Macy, and Black Star, Kwame’s likes to walk around Washington, DC listening to podcasts and audio books, and go shopping (at Sephora) with his six-foot tall daughter, who is about to go to college. Kwame has eaten snails, chocolate covered bugs, and grasscutter, which is like a big rat, which he had no idea he was eating because it was in a really tasty stew he ate in Ghana while building a library and a health clinic in a village called Konko. He’s never eaten frogs. But, he has written a book about them called Surf’s Up. The first children’s book Kwame ever wrote was about a Rooster that starts a jazz band, and guess what...He turned it into an Emmy-nominated cartoon and a game on PBS Kids. It’s called Acoustic Rooster and his Barnyard Band. Kwame loves jazz. Kwame loves his family. Kwame loves his job. Kwame’s most recent job is as founder of a new non-profit whose mission is to make reading cool and fun and it's name is One Word at a Time.