Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen
Yolen at the 2011 New York Comic Con.
Born	Jane Hyatu Yolen February 11, 1939 (1939-02-11) (age 72)
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Period	1960s-present
Genres	Science fiction, Fantasy, Children's fiction
janeyolen.com

Jane Yolen's Wizard's Hall

Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American author and editor of almost 300 books. These include folklore, fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She wrote the Nebula Award-winning Sister Emily's Lightship (short story) and Lost Girls (novelette), as well as Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite, Caldecott Medal winners, the Commander Toad series and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight. In 2010 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Awards.^[1]

Personal life

Yolen was born in New York City and raised in California, Virginia, and New York. Her father was a journalist and publicist. She received her bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1960 and her master's degree in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1976. She was married to computer scientist David Stemple from 1962 until his death from cancer on March 22, 2006. She has three children: Heidi Stemple, Adam Stemple, and Jason Stemple, and several grandchildren. Yolen maintains homes in Hatfield, Massachusetts and in St Andrews, Scotland.

Career

Newsweek called Jane Yolen "the Hans Christian Andersen of America" and The New York Times labeled her "a modern equivalent of Aesop." She has written around 300 books, 4590 poems, and 3452 short stories. 67 of these won awards.

Her many short stories can be found in books as diverse as Am I Blue?: Coming out from the Silence and Briar Rose (The Fairy Tales Series). One example is "Memoirs of a Bottle Djinni" in Arabesques (edited by Susan Schwartz in 1988). Yolen also has a gift for the very short story, as evidenced by "Angelica" in 100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories. This latter anthology was edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Carr in 1985.

Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, Favorite Folktales From Around the World, Xanadu and Xanadu 2 are among the works that she has edited.

Her writing also includes poetry. Yolen said that writing poems and short stories comes to her more naturally, but that she has tried to master the longer form when a particular story called for it.^[2] Many of her poems, like her books, have won awards. Some of her awards to date: the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, both first and second place in the 2007 Dwarf Stars Award, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the Association of Jewish Libraries Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

In the children's writing community, she is known for her pithy observations and her generosity toward beginning writers and illustrators. Yolen has also criticized the Harry Potter series:

“

I read the first three. The fourth one stopped me in my tracks, partially because even though the story moves along, I just don't feel like they're well written. Besides, I wrote a book called Wizard's Hall [in 1991, eight years before the first Harry Potter book]. And there's an awful lot of Wizard's Hall in it [the Harry Potter books]. I always tell people that if Ms. Rowling would like to cut me a very small check, I would cash it. [Wizard's Hall] has got a boy named Henry [who] goes to wizard school, doesn't think he has talent. He has a good friend with red hair. There's a wicked wizard who's trying to destroy the school, and the pictures on the wall move and speak and change. I have kids who write to me all the time and say, "I thought you had stolen Harry Potter, but my teacher pointed out that you published it eight years before Harry Potter."[3]

”

Yolen has also criticized publishers for not promoting their authors sufficient promotion, and focusing what little promotion they do provide on celebrity authors such as Jay Leno, Maria Shriver, Billy Crystal and Madonna, none whom, Yolen says, "can really write kids books well", in order to recoup the large advances given to those more visible authors, forcing Yolen to hire her own publicist.^[4]

Yolen has named among her favorite authors Mordicai Gerstein, Shannon Hale, Gail Carson Levine, Linda Sue Park, Bruce Coville, Robert Sabuda, Kate DiCamillo, Richard Peck, Julius Lester, Nikki Grimes, Lee Bennet Hopkins, Jackie Woodson, as well as members of her own writing group, Patricia MacLachlan, Ann Turner, Leslea Newman, Corinne Demas, Barbara Diamond Goldin, Anna Kirwan.^[4]

Bibliography

The Pit Dragon Trilogy

1. Dragon's Blood (1982)
2. Heart's Blood (1984)
3. A Sending of Dragons (1987)
4. Dragon's Heart (2009)

Selected novels and books

(She has written over 300)

• The Bird of Time (illustrated by Mercer Mayer) (1971)
• The Simple Prince (illustrated by Jack Kent) (1978)
• The Gift of Sarah Barker (1981)
• Children of the Wolf (1984)
• The Stone Silenus (1984)
• "Cards of Grief" (1985, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature)
• Sister Light, Sister Dark (1989, Nebula Award finalist)
• The Dragon's Boy (1990)
• White Jenna (1990, Nebula Award finalist)
• Greyling (1991, picture book)
• Wings (1991, picture book)
• Wizard's Hall (1991)
• Briar Rose (1992, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, Nebula Award finalist)
• The One Armed Queen (1998)
• Armageddon Summer (1998, with Bruce Coville, ALA Best Book for Young Adults, ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers)
• The Wizard's Map(1999)
• Queen's Own Fool (2000, with Robert J. Harris)
• Wild Wings: Poems for Young People (2002, with Jason Stemple. National Outdoor Book Award (Children's Category))
• Girl in a Cage (2002, with Robert J. Harris)
• Sword of the Rightful King (2003, ALA Best Books 2004, ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2004, ALA Top 10 Fantasy Books for Youth 2004)
• Prince Across the Water (2004, with Robert J. Harris)
• The Young Merlin Trilogy: Passager, Hobby, and Merlin (2004)
• Pay the Piper: a rock and roll fairy tale (2005, with Adam Stemple)
• " The Devils Arithmetic
• Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters (2011, illustrated by Kelly Murphy)

Selected novellas and novelettes

• "The Devil's Arithmetic" (1988 novella, Nebula Award finalist; 1999, made into a movie starring Kirsten Dunst, Mimi Rogers and Brittany Murphy)
• "Lost Girls" (1998 novelette, Nebula Award winner)

Selected poems

• "Tintagel Morning: Song" (Asimov's Science Fiction, v.14 #4, April 1990)
• "Angels Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly" (Asimov's Science Fiction, v.15 #14, No.179, December 1991) (1991 Asimov's Readers' Award, poetry)
• "Will" (Broadside, Midsummer Night's Press; The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Spring 1992) (1993 Rhysling Award winner)
• "Lies" (Paradox, Issue 8, Winter 2005-2006)
• "War Memorial: Edinburgh" (Paradox, Issue 8, Winter 2005-2006)
• "Fife Map" (Paradox, Issue 9, Summer 2006)
• "Suzy and Leah"

Short story anthologies edited by Jane Yolen

• Werewolves (1988, with Martin H. Greenberg)
• Xanadu (1992, with Martin H. Greenberg)
• Xanadu 2 (1993, with Martin H. Greenberg)
• Xanadu 3 (1994, with Martin H. Greenberg)
• 2041: Twelve Short Stories About the Future by Top Science Fiction Writers (1994, with Connie Willis and Anne McCaffrey)
• Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens (2005, with Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

Folklore collection edited by Jane Yolen

• Favorite Folktales From Around the World (winner of the World Fantasy Award)

References

1. ^ World Fantasy Convention (2010). "Award Winners and Nominees". http://www.worldfantasy.org/awards/awardslist.html/. Retrieved 04 Feb 2011. 
2. ^ Kennedy, Elizabeth (2007-02-05). "An Interview With Award-Winning Author Jane Yolen". About.com. http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/authorsillustrato/a/janeyolen.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-08. 
3. ^ "Writing Dynamo". Archived from the original on 2007-08-30. http://web.archive.org/web/20070830170858/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8917828/site/newsweek/. Retrieved 2007-08-22. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Kennedy, Elizabeth (2007-02-05). "Jane Yolen on "Celebrity" Authors and Favorite Authors". About.com. http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/authorsillustrato/a/janeyolen_2.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-08. 

External links

• Official Website
• Jane Yolen at the Comic Book DB
• Jane Yolen's online writing journal
• Jane Yolen at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Bibliography on SciFan
• 2001 interview with Jane Yolen and a review of Briar Rose
• 2007 interview with Jane Yolen at Childrensbookradio
• Bio at Endicott Studio
• Works by or about Jane Yolen in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Rita Berman Frischer, Biography of Jane Yolen, Jewish Women Encyclopedia

Persondata
Name	Yolen, Jane
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1939-02-11
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death