Skip to main content

Kwame Alexander

Children's Author

Kwame Alexander, an award-winning poet and author, writes picture books for children and cross-genre books for teens. The Crossover — his basketball-concrete poetry-hiphop mashup — was awarded the 2015 Newbery Medal. Kwame is also the creator of the in-school Book-in-a-Day writing and publishing workshop.

Biography

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and New York Times bestselling author of 42 books (as of 2025), including The Crossover, which received the 2015 John Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor, the NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, and the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. His other titles include the picture books Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band (optioned as a children’s television show), Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, The Undefeated (2020 Caldecott medal and Newbery Honor), An American Story (2023 New York Times Best Children’s Book and NPR Best Book of the Year), and the YA novel He Said, She Said.

Kwame is also the Executive Producer, Showrunner, and Writer of the Emmy-award winning series The Crossover (opens in a new window), based on his Newbery-Medal winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. 

Kwame believes that poetry can change the world, and he uses it to inspire and empower young people through his Book-in-a-Day literacy program which has created more than 3,000 student authors at 69 schools across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. A regular speaker and workshop presenter at conferences in the U.S., he also travels the world planting seeds of literary love (Brazil, Italy, France, and Turkey).

Kwame has also led a delegation of 20 writers and activists to Ghana, where they delivered books, built a library, and provided literacy professional development to 300 teachers, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an International literacy program he co-founded. In 2015, Kwame served as Bank Street College of Education’s first writer-in-residence.

Learn more at Kwame Alexander’s official website (opens in a new window).

Books by this author

Find this author’s books on these booklists

Top