Janet Wong is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former lawyer who switched careers to become a children’s author. Her dramatic career change has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN’s Paula Zahn Show, and Radical Sabbatical. She is the author of more than 30 books for children and teens on a wide variety of subjects, including writing and revision (You Have to Write), community and inclusion (Apple Pie 4th of July), peer pressure (Me and Rolly Maloo), chess (Alex and the Wednesday Chess Club), identity (A Suitcase of Seaweed & MORE), and yoga (Twist: Yoga Poems), and is the winner of the 2021 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, a lifetime achievement award that is one of the highest honors an American children’s poet can receive. A frequent featured speaker at conferences in person and online, Wong has served as a member of several national committees, including the SCBWI Golden Kite committee, the NCTE Commission on Literature, and the ILA Notable Books for a Global Society committee. Her most recent book, co-edited with Sylvia Vardell, is WHAT IS A FAMILY?, an anthology of 40 ekphrastic poems exploring many different views of family. You can learn more about her work at janet-wong.com and pomelobooks.com.
