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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and there are geniuses among us. The 2020 MacArthur Fellows were named a couple of weeks ago. That's the official designation of this group of "Exceptionally creative individuals" but they are better known as MacArthur Genius Grants and our listening area turns out to be home to quite a few of the winners this year. All week on the Brian Lehrer show, we've lined up a genius a day to end the show with. Five newly mentored Genius prize winners, we want to end the show with each day this week.

Today we are joined by Brooklyn writer, Jacqueline Woodson, who was honored to quote what the MacArthur Foundation had to say, "For redefining children and young adult literature to encompass more complex issues and reflect the lives of Black children, teenagers, and families." Congratulations. Welcome back. Thank you for joining us today and sharing your genius, Jacqueline Woodson.

Jacqueline Woodson: Thanks, Brian. I'm glad to be here again.

Brian Lehrer: In your case, that joins a long list of other honors like the Hans Christian Andersen Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature given out by a queen no less. This one comes with a cash grant and the genius word. Does it feel special in a certain particular way?

Jacqueline Woodson: It feels special and that it's the MacArthur, which is so legendary to so many of us in this way that maybe we know someone who's gotten it before or we just heard of it. Anything that attaches the word genius makes you feel some way I have to say.

Brian Lehrer: I could ask you to read a little from your work but on your website, you have kindly posted a video of Alicia Keys doing just that when she nominated your memoir in verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, for the Los Angeles schools A-list book club. Here she is reading the passage titled Gifted.

Alicia Keys: Everyone knows my sister is brilliant. The letters come home folded neatly inside official-looking envelopes that my sister probably hands over to my mother. Odella has achieved. Odella has excelled at. Odella has been recommended too. Odella's outstanding performance in. She is gifted, we are told, and I imagine presents surrounding her. I am not gifted. When I read the words twist, twirl across the page. When they settle, it is too late. The class has already moved on. I want to catch words one day. I want to hold them, then blow gently, watch them float right out of my hands.

Brian Lehrer: That's beautiful. Wow, what an inspiration really for any kid having trouble with reading right now since that was your own story, right?

Jacqueline Woodson: It was. I read very, very slowly. I've always read slowly and I spend a lot of time with words, which makes sense as a writer but there was no tolerance for the way I read back in the day. I fear there's no tolerance for young people reading slowly today, which makes me sad.

Brian Lehrer: Slow reading or not, you've written at least 30 books for children, teens, and adults so there is a lot to keep track of. I believe your most recent book is Before the Ever After that came out last month for ages 10 and up. It's a novel in verse about a boy whose father is a former professional football player. Now suffering from the brain damage that we've learned can result from sports like football, in particular. You don't shy away from tough topics when talking to children and young adults. How have you figured out how to walk that line?

Jacqueline Woodson: I think that life doesn't shy away from tough topics. I think we'd be lying to our young people if we made them believe that the world wasn't as it is. I think as long as there is hope somewhere in the narrative, young people know they're going to be okay. They want to engage in literature that is familiar where they can see some part of themselves in the narrative. I really try to make sure the hope is there and tell a good story that will engage them and introduce them to characters that they'll fall in love with and want to follow through with.

Brian Lehrer: Have you always written in verse? What does that structure add to the storytelling that prose sometimes can't offer?

Jacqueline Woodson: In this case, it's a book about memory, in the same way, that Brown Girl Dreaming was. We know that memory comes in these small moments with all of this white space around it so there's the unknown that white space represents. It felt like in the case of Before the Ever After, his father is losing his memory and it felt it would have been not true to write that book as a straight narrative, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three.

Just as in the case of Brown Girl Dreaming, it would have felt false to write my memoir as a straight narrative because that's not how life is lived. I haven't always written in verse. The first book I wrote in verse was a book called Locomotion. Before then, I was terrified of poetry. I mean, I think for a long time, I thought it was this secret code, and that only a few people had the password to. As I read more and more poetry, I began to understand that it wasn't that. That it was a party we were all invited to and I really tried to bring that to the book so that young people aren't afraid to step into a novel written in verse.

Brian Lehrer: Have you thought about writing about this pandemic, either now, or someday? So many lives disrupted, if not worse but for your audience of younger readers, we're in a few months of such a big part of their lived experience.

Jacqueline Woodson: I haven't thought about writing it because as you know, I have a 12-year-old and an 18-year-old, so I am right up in it. I think that what I can do is provide narratives that speak to a time where we lived through something like this so that they know that we can survive it. I just wrote a picture book about two kids who go into their heads and fly away. It's based on the idea that Black people could fly and that's how they left enslavement. Inside their heads, they weren't enslaved so I think that's the same. That's not talking specifically about this pandemic but it's talking about the way we can have freedom inside such a place where we feel so locked in.

Brian Lehrer: What are you working on now? Anything you can reveal as next?

Jacqueline Woodson: Oh, my goodness. I am actually working on a middle-grade book. I just finished the screenplay for Red at the Bone that I'm doing with Lena Waves Company for my grad, I just finished. Well, I'm writing a miniseries based on another book called Behind You. I think I can't say yet who I'm doing that with but it's somebody we all love. I'm writing poetry and trying to keep a daughter who's at her first year at Howard and a son who's in seventh grade but a lot of good things are happening and I'm just glad we're safe.

Brian Lehrer: That's great. Do you think as a last thought, the publishing industry has faced a lot of criticism for the lack of representation of people of color in its ranks and in the authors that make it to bookstores. Has your success opened doors for others that you can actually see?

Jacqueline Woodson: I hope so. I really hope so. I do see a change. I mean, organizations like We Need Diverse Books and First Book, people are really showing that there are books out there and there need to be more books. One thing I'm doing within the MacArthur is starting an organization called Baldwin for the Arts, where we're building a residency for bipod artists. This is visual artists, writers, and composers to create art. I think that's a way to really get artists into the world so publishers can't say, "Well, they're not there."

Brian Lehrer: That's great. Jacqueline Woodson's latest book is the novel in verse Before the Ever After. Congratulations on your Genius Award.

Jacqueline Woodson: Thank you, Brian. Nice talking to you again.

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