Virginia Hamilton was born March 12, 1934. She received a scholarship to Antioch College, and then went on to the Ohio State University in Columbus, where she majored in literature and creative writing. She also studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her first children's book, Zeely, was published in 1967. During her lifetime, she wrote over 40 books including The People Could Fly; The Planet of Junior Brown; Bluish; Cousins; and the Dies Drear Chronicles. She was the first African American woman to win the Newbery Award, for M. C. Higgins, the Great. She has won numerous awards including three Newbery Honors, three Coretta Scott King Awards, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1995, and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1995. She was also the first children's author to receive a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1995. She died from breast cancer on February 19, 2002 at the age of 67.