2020/2021 Inprint Cool Brains! Series presents four-time Newbery Honor winner Jacqueline Woodson with new middle-grade novel Before the Ever After on June 27th

The 2020/2021 Inprint Cool Brains! Series presents an exciting afternoon with four-time Newbery Honor winner Jacqueline Woodson, sharing her new middle-grade novel Before the Ever After. The event takes place on Sunday, June 27, 4 pm CT via the Inprint “virtual studio.” Free tickets, required to access the livestream, are available through the Inprint website, inprinthouston.org. After a short presentation, Woodson will respond to video questions/messages submitted by kids. The first 20 kids to submit videos for Woodson will receive a free hardcover copy of Before the Ever After. For more information, visit inprinthouston.org or call 713.521.2026.

Jacqueline Woodson is the critically-acclaimed author of more than 30 award- winning books for children, including After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way, and the adult novels Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn. She is also the author of the National Book Award-winning middle-grade novel Brown Girl Dreaming, “a book full of poems that cry out to be learned by heart” (The New York Times Book Review). Among her many accolades, Woodson is a four-time Newbery Honor winner and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. She was named the 2015 Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress, and was selected for a 2020 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. According to the MacArthur Foundation, “Woodson gives diverse readers an opportunity to see themselves reflected in literature and encourages all readers to look beyond their own experience and see the beauty in other human beings.” Woodson was also the 2020 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author and illustrator of children’s books.

She appears virtually in the Inprint Cool Brains! Series to share her new novel-in-verse Before the Ever After, which tells the story of a twelve-year-old whose life quickly turns from charmed to tragic after his pro-football player dad sustains a series of head injuries.

Chronicling a family forever changed, Before the Ever After is “a poignant and achingly beautiful narrative that sheds light on the price of a violent sport” (Kirkus, starred review). Perfect for middle-grade math nerds and sports fans alike, this “doleful tale unveils the intense nostalgia and hope one can feel despite realizing that sometimes what is lost can never be regained” (Publishers Weekly).

The Inprint Cool Brains! Series is presented by Inprint, Houston’s premiere nonprofit literary organization. Since 2007, Inprint has presented nearly 40 of the nation’s leading children’s authors in the series, including Sylvia Acevedo, Kwame Alexander, Christopher Paul Curtis, Nathan Hale, Lois Lowry, R. J. Palacio, Gary Paulsen, Jason Reynolds, Jon Scieszka, and others. The series receives generous underwriting support from H-E-B and the National Endowment for the Arts. Inprint also receives invaluable support from the Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation, Houston Endowment, Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. Blue Willow Bookshop is the Inprint Cool Brains! Series bookseller.