Kwame Alexander
“He truly is a renaissance man.”—Nikki Giovanni
Kwame Alexander is a Top 100 AALBC.com Bestselling Author Making Our List 26 Times
Kwame’s Why Fathers Cry at Night Tour Begins May 24, 2023
Kwame Alexander is a #1 AALBC and New York Times Bestselling Author of The Door of No Return Trilogy and An American Story. He is a Writer and Executive Producer of The Crossover which airs in on Disney+ & Disney Channel. Alexander is the President of Big Sea Entertainment, a poet, educator, and a Bestselling author of 38 books, including Booked, Surf’s Up, and The Crossover, which received the 2015 John Newbery Medal, the NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, The Paterson Poetry Prize, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor. His other works include Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band (The 2014 Michigan Reads One Book Selection), and Kwame Alexander’s Page to Stage Writing Workshop, a curriculum based on his Book-in-a-Day student-run publishing program that created more than 5,000 student authors in 75 schools between 2006-2015.
He is the founder of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy project that builds libraries, trains teachers, and empowers children through literature. He visits schools and libraries, has owned several publishing companies, written for stage and television (TLC’s “Hip Hop Harry”), produced jazz and book festivals, and taught in a high school. In 2015, Kwame served as Bank Street College of Education’s Inaugural Dorothy M. Carter writer-in-residence.
Dubbed a “phenom” in the poetry world by The Charleston (SC) City Paper, Alexander has written for television the stage, and authored several books including the best-selling Do The Write Thing: 7 Steps to Publishing Success, Dancing Naked on the Floor: poems and essays, Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur, and a young adult title, Crush: Love Poems. He speaks, and conducts writing/publishing workshops at schools and conferences throughout the country. He has produced several book festivals, including the Capital BookFest, Presented by The Washington Post.
The Kwame Alexander Papers, a
collection of his writings, correspondence, and other professional and personal documents is held at the George Washington University Gelman Library. The founder/president of
BlackWords Press (1995-2005), Alexander resides in the Washington, DC area, where he serves as the President of
Book-in-a-Day, a literacy non-profit organization that teaches and inspires youth in the writing and publishing process.
Book-in-a-Day (BID) is a non-profit, educational services company that fosters literacy skills through a groundbreaking writing and publishing workshop, which focuses on the fundamentals of poetry and student-run publication’in one day. The program is available for schools, recreation centers, libraries, and other youth-related organizations.
Learn more at Kwame Alexander’s official website
