Angela Johnson

Angela Johnson is a 1994 Coretta Scott King Award winner for Fiction for the novel Toning the Sweep, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for her picture book When I'm Old With You, and the book The Other Side: Shorter Poems, which was the 1998 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Winner, and a 1999 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book.

I'd love to share with your website subscribers the book that changed my life and the way I envisioned writing.

The book was SWEET WHISPERS BROTHER RUSH by Virginia Hamilton.

I read the book when I was at Kent State University. I'd started taking care of a young writers little boy. She kindly told me to enjoy her library and home (I was immersed in student housing.) I did both, and one day found myself reading and weeping on her couch as her four year old played with Jabba the Hut on the floor.

The book spoke to me. The writer's voice was visceral. It made me want to speak of life, loss, wanting, love…

And in the end, I did.

Regards,

Angela Johnson