Karen Hesse

This biocritical review focuses on Karen Hesse, whose work, Out of the Dust, won the Newbery Medal in 1998, and was awarded a "Genius" fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation - one of only two such fellowships ever given to writers for children or adolescents. It includes interviews with Hesse and her publisher, as well as considerable detail on how she writes, researches, creates book topics and characters, and weaves real-life experiences into all of her stories. Teachers, librarians, and teen readers will find this an intriguing look into the writing of Karen Hesse.