Dates of event :
from: 15. 10. 2021
to: 28. 2. 2022
Venue :
Bratislavský hrad, 2. poschodie
The Hans Christian Andersen Prize is considered to be the most prestigious international award for authors in the field of youth literature. It has been awarded by the International Union for Children's Books (IBBY) since 1956. It has two categories: writers (for literary work) and illustrators (for illustrative work). The award is named after the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen and the gold medal is presented by the Queen of Denmark. The award is announced every even year.
The winner of the award in 2018 was Jacqueline Woodson, whose work the exhibition describes.
JACQUELINE WOODSON, USA
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN AWARD FOR LITERATURE 2020
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1963, and shortly thereafter moved with her mother and siblings to Greenville, South Carolina where she spent much of her early formative years in the care of her maternal grandparents. At age seven she moved to Brooklyn, New York where she has since lived. She studied at Adelphi University and at the New School in New York and then worked as an editorial assistant and drama therapist for runaway children. Though a slow reader, she began writing as a child and now has a prolific body of writing including picture books, books for middle grade readers, and especially young adult literature.
She made her debut as an author in 1990 with Last Summer With Maizon, the first book in a trilogy about a friendship between two girls. In the same year she also published The Dear One, a story about teen pregnancy. Her thirty-three books and thirteen short stories range in subjects from foster care to interracial relationships, from drug abuse to the witness protection programme, but all share the common features of lyrical language, powerful characters, and an abiding sense of hope. In 2014, her autobiographical work Brown Girl Dreaming was the winner of the National Book Award and Coretta Scott King Award and is a Newbery Honor book. It is the centrepiece of her oeuvre: her first-hand experiences of how African- Americans were treated differently in the North and South, where her own path to becoming a writer is woven in with her life experiences.
Jacqueline Woodson was a Finalist for the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award and won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018. After serving as Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015-17 she was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2018-19
