Tonya Bolden

Tonya Bolden is a Top 100 AALBC.com Bestselling Author Making Our List 7 Times

Tonya Bolden, a Princeton University magna cum laude baccalaureate with a master’s degree from Columbia University, is a recipient of the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC’s Nonfiction Award, and a critically acclaimed award-winning author/co-author/editor of more than forty books [2020]. Her book include Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl, a Coretta Scott King honor book, James Madison Book Award winner. Bolden’s MLK: Journey of a King received the National Council of Teachers of English’s 2008 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, and Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, A Monumental American Man. High praise for her George Washington Carver include a Virginia Library AssociationJefferson Cup and a Cleveland Public Library Sugarman Award.

In a starred review Kirkus had this to say of Tonya’s Civil War novel Crossing Ebenezer Creek: “Informative, engrossing, and unflinching … A poetic, raw, and extraordinary imagining of a little-known, shameful chapter in American history.”

“Poetic, breathtaking and fast-paced,” said School Library Journal in its starred review of the follow-up novel Inventing Victoria. Set during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, this is the story of a steely young woman desperate for her past not to define her future. The third novel in this linked series is Saving Savannah, set in the explosive, tumultuous year of 1919. This is the story of a restless young woman churning with discontent and seeking change—change in her life, change in the world.

Speaking of change, Tonya’s book, Changing the Equation: 50+ US Black Women in STEM (March 3, 2020), is a celebration of the contributions black women in America have made in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “Bolden’s lively text, accompanied by archival images, underscores the importance of sharing these stories to understand the long tradition of black women striving in these areas. &ldsquo;A worthy addition to the effort to tell a more complete and compelling American history,” said Kirkus Reviews.

Tonya Bolden lives in New York City, where in the spring and summer, if time permits, she tends a vegetable garden.

Learn more at Tonya Bolden’s official website

Read our “Children’s Book Author Tonya Bolden” Interview with Tonya Bolden