Many Thousand Gone

Virginia Hamilton, storyteller, lecturer, and biographer, was born and raised in Yellow Springs, OH, which is said to be a station on the Underground Railroad. Her grandfather settled in the village after escaping slavery in Virginia. She was educated at Antioch College and Ohio State University and did further study in literature and the novel at the New School for Social Research. Virginia was the first African American woman to win the Newbery Award, for M.C. Higgins the Great. Since then, she has won three Newbery Honors and three Coretta Scott King Awards. In 1992, Virginia was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, which is presented every two years by the International Board on Books for Young People, in recognition of her entire body of work. Virginia writes first for the pleasure of using words and language to evoke characters and their world, and in historical accounts such as Anthony Burns, the lives of real people. Secondly, Hamilton writes to entertain, to inspire in people the desire to read on and on good books made especially for them. Leo and Diane Dillon have twice won the Caldecott Medal

Leo Dillon was born to Trinidadian parents in New York in 1933. He met his future wife, Diane, when they were both studying at the Parsons School of Design in New York in 1953. They married in 1957 and became an iconic artistic duo. Leo and Diane collaborated on covers and woodcuts for a number of Harlan Ellison books; in 1981, Ellison edited a biography of them entitled The Art of Leo & Diane Dillon. Leo and Diane are the only illustrators to win the Caldecott Medal two years in a row, which they did in 1976 and 1977. They produced more than 100 speculative book and magazine covers together. Leo Dillon passed away in 2012.