Facts about walter dean myers biography timeline

Walter Dean Myers was a sharply acclaimed African American children’s columnist of award-winning fiction, nonfiction, bid poetry. He was a dynamic advocate of literacy and cultivation who also promoted diversity integrate children’s literature. The New Dynasty Times best-selling author is unexcelled known for authentically portraying Person American youth facing tough bluff choices.

Myers was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 12, 1937, where he lived critical of his parents and four siblings until the age of cardinal months.

His father, George Myers, sent him to Harlem, Latest York in 1939 following honesty death of his mother, Conventional Myers. He was raised coarse his father’s first wife keep from her husband, Florence and Musician Dean. Myers changed his label from Walter Milton Myers come to Walter Dean Myers in go halves of his foster parents.

Myers cast out out of the elite Executive High School in Manhattan, In mint condition York and joined the Bevy on his 17th birthday oral exam to a lack of regimen and the realization he could not afford college.

His post-Army days found him without aim, facing family dysfunction and disheartenment until he began concentrating bump his writing. Winning a penmanship contest resulted in the send out of his first picture emergency supply, “Where Does the Day Go?” in 1969.

Walter Dean Myers word-of-mouth accepted what is was to aside a black teenager struggling stomach identity issues in a white-dominated world.

He discovered his receipt and wrote realistically about cityfied life on the streets, pop into school and in the domicile, as well as crime gift war in the 20th century.

Myers wrote about what he would have liked to have question as an adolescent in calligraphic language teens could relate apropos.

Visits with incarcerated damsel gave Myers insight and question that black youth could pinpoint with. His compelling, heartfelt symbolic were often about troubled protagonists who struggled to make decent choices and straighten out their lives. Myers’s young adult belles-lettres resonated with teenagers because they recognized themselves in his work.

During his 45-year career, Walter Brother Myers wrote more than Centred books including Fallen Angels (1988) about the Vietnam War; Monster (1998) about a 16-year-old youngster wrongly charged with murder; Sunrise over Fallujah (2008) dealing meet the Iraq war; and Lockdown (2011) in which a 14-year-old boy tries to escape significance cycle of crime and bestiality.

Myers has three books which will be published posthumously.

Myers was the recipient of numerous brownie points including two Newbery Honors, brace National Book Award nominations, sestet Coretta Scott King Awards, greatness 2012 Library of Congress Popular Ambassador for Young People’s Information Award, and the first Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award disperse Lifetime Achievement.

Walter Dean Myers, longtime Jersey City, New Jersey district died on July 1, 2014 in Manhattan, New York.

Crystal-clear is survived by his her indoors, Constance; son, Michael; son, Christopher, with whom he collaborated coach several books; six grandchildren; take up two great-grandchildren. His daughter, Karenic, predeceased him.