Brooklyn Book Festival to present ‘Best of Brooklyn’ Award to Jacqueline Woodson
Brooklyn BookBeat
Multi-award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson has been named the recipient of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s annual Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) Award. The festival, which is New York City’s largest free public literary event, each year pays tribute to an author whose work exemplifies or speaks to the spirit of the festival’s hometown, Brooklyn. In addition to honoring Woodson, the festival is recognizing three more of Brooklyn’s own—Andrea Davis Pinkney, Ben Katchor and Bernice McFadden — with collectible bookmarks that will be available in library branches and select bookstores.
“The Literary Council chose Jacqueline Woodson this year in recognition of an extensive and phenomenal body of work that gives voice to Brooklyn past and present, for readers of all ages,” said Johnny Temple, chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council. “We celebrate Ms. Woodson as a proud daughter of Brooklyn whose writing honors community, family and friendship, perfectly capturing the spirit of the festival.”
“I am deeply honored to be chosen by the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council to receive this year’s BoBi Award,” said Woodson. “My years and life in Brooklyn guided my stories and my hopes for what I wanted to accomplish as a writer. I wanted to write about communities and people that were familiar to me. I wanted to write about people of color. I wanted to write about girls. I wanted to write about friendship and all the ways we form family. There were huge holes in the literature of my childhood. I wanted to fill those holes and my life in Brooklyn helped guide me in creating those lives and stories,” Woodson continued.