Jason Reynolds

Outside of her rap, few literary works spoke to his experience of urban life growing up as a Black Child and then teenager in the 1980s and 1990s, and he didn't start reading books until he was 17.

In the meantime, Tupac and Biggie also formed major influences.

Jason Reynolds (born December 6, 1983) is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audience.

Reynolds was born on December 6, 1983, in Washington, DC, and grew up just across Maryland border in Oxon Hill, a neighborhood where his mother, a special

education teacher in a Maryland public school, could afford a house with a yard and enough space for Reynolds, his three siblings, and sometimes other extended family.

At nine years old, Reynolds was inspired by Queen Latifah's third album, Black Reign, to start writing poetry.

One of Reynolds's earliest poems dealt with his grandmother's death in 1994 when he was 10.

He wrote a few lines in an effort to console his mother, who printed the poem on the program for the funeral, and after that Reynolds wrote poems as each of his grandmother's siblings passed.

Moved by these experiences of "the power of language", he continued to pursue poetry through high school, graduating from Bishop McNamara High School in 2000, and college, even as he received poor grades and discouragement from professors in his English courses at the University of Maryland (he ultimately graduated with a BA in English.)

While an undergraduate, Reynolds met collaborator Jason Griffin, who became his roommate.

Reynolds was also introduced to spoken word in this period and began performing, including eventually solo shows, and in 2001, his first book came out, a poetry collection called Let Me Speak.

During college, Reynolds also worked at a DC bookstore chain called Karibu Books, which specialized in African-American literature.

At Karibu he encountered prose that resonated with him for the first time, such as Richard Wright's novel Black Boy.

Enthralled with Wright's novel from the first page, Reynolds next began making his way through the great works of African-American literature on the store's shelves, reading James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison.

While at Karibu he also encountered street fiction, also known as urban fiction, which is a literary genre Reynolds compares to rap's capacity for being "raw and honest. For some kids, this was their life."

After graduating from college, Reynolds moved to New York with a classmate, Jason Griffin; in 2005, the pair self-published a collaboration, collecting Griffin's visual art and Reynolds's poetry, called SELF. The book earned the pair an agent and then a book contract.

Four years later they published ''My Name Is Jason.

Mine Too.: Our Story.

Our Way'', a memoir about moving to New York to pursue their dreams, expressed through Reynolds's poetry and Griffin's illustrations.

They published the book with the HarperTeen imprint of HarperCollins, working with editor Joanna Cotler (after Cotler retired, she referred him to Caitlin Dlouhy, who would become the editor on his next seven books).

In the meantime, Reynolds moved home to DC in 2008 after losing his apartment in New York.

He worked at a department store—the Lord & Taylor in North Bethesda, Maryland—to pay the bills, going to a Borders bookstore on his lunch break to see his book arrive on the shelf in 2009.

Next, he became a caseworker in a mental health clinic his father directed.

Eventually, Reynolds returned to New York, again working in retail while he applied to graduate school, unsuccessfully because of his college grades.

Nevertheless, he began writing a young adult novel —"often while standing at the cash register when business was slow" at the Rag & Bone store he managed —spurred by his friend Chris Myers, son of Walter Dean Myers and himself an author and illustrator.

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap and had an early focus on poetry, publishing several poetry collections before his first novel in 2014, When I Was The Greatest, which won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent.

Reynolds had told Chris he had basically stopped writing, but Chris pointed out that with his father aging (the elder Myers died in 2014), there would soon be a shortage of new works written about young black children, particularly black boys.

He suggested Reynolds look at some of his father's old works, and The Young Landlords particularly connected with Reynolds; the work gave Reynolds the confidence to "write in my voice, use my tongue, my language, my style, and write a story. Before that I always felt like I wasn't good enough because I wasn't Baldwin, or Toni Mor, or Richard Wright", but after reading Myers's work, "the floodgates were opened."

In the next four years, Reynolds wrote eight more novels, most notably the New York Times best-selling Track series—Ghost (2016), Patina (2017), Sunny (2018), Lu (2018)—and As Brave as You (2016).

Ghost was a National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature and As Brave as You won the Kirkus Prize, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teen, and the Schneider Family Book Award.

Reynolds moved back to Washington, D.C., from Brooklyn in 2016.

He collects items related to African-American literature, including a letter by Langston Hughes, a pre-publication review copy of Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land and an autographed first edition copy of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

He appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2021 to discuss his collecting.

Reynolds does not start with a particular age audience in mind; instead he focuses on trying to write the voice of his characters authentically and lets that dictate whom the book would appeal to.

All of his writings feature minority characters, which he sees as a reflection of the modern world.

Reynolds also wrote a Marvel Comics novel called Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2017).

In 2017, Reynolds returned to poetry with Long Way Down, a novel in verse that was named a Newbery Honor book, a Printz Honor Book, and best young adult work by the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Awards.

In 2019, he wrote Look Both Ways, for which he won a Carnegie Medal.

From 2020 to 2022, Reynolds was the Library of Congress' National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

In 2023, Reynolds won the Margaret A. Edwards Award.