Award-Winning Novelist Jacqueline Woodson at Boswell Book Co.

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Jacqueline Woodson has secured her reputation as one of America’s most accomplished contemporary writers. The current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature has accumulated a lengthy list of book awards, including four Newbery Honor Medals, two Coretta Scott King Awards, and the Caldecott Medal, among others. Much of her fiction is shelved in the children’s section, but her writing has a sturdy maturity and her characters—no matter their age—display an extraordinary human depth that leaps off the page.

Her 2014 memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, written entirely in lyrical free verse, won Woodson the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller. In it, she tells a tender tale of the family that raised her in both Midwestern Ohio and the South during the 1960s and 1970s (Woodson was born in 1963).

Since the 1990s, Woodson has penned poignant and timely stories that explore topics including race, economic class, history and family. Now she’s out with a much-anticipated full-length (but not lengthy) novel that follows two Brooklyn-based families over the span of three generations. Red at the Bone is a compelling story that forever connects individual lives after a teenage romance results in pregnancy. This powerful narrative demonstrates how the decisions we make as young people follow us long into the future and often have sweeping consequences.

Milwaukee is excited to welcome the acclaimed author to Boswell Book Co. for a ticketed event on Monday, Sept. 23, at 7.p.m. Woodson will be in conversation with Milwaukee writer and performer Dasha Kelly Hamilton. Tickets cost $28 and include a copy of Red at the Bone.