Meet the Author: Nikki Grimes

Acclaimed and award-winning author Nikki Grimes reads from her new book <i>Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir</i>. With <i>Ordinary Hazards</i> Grimes delivers a memoir in the form of a powerful and inspiring collection of poems. She details her early life through adulthood and she unabashedly explores the highs as well as the lows. Young adults will identify with and connect to the many challenges explored in Grimes' work which delves into issues of love family responsibility belonging finding your place in the world and fighting the monsters you know--and the ones you don't. The memoir has heartbreaking moments--even soul-crushing ones--that will make readers ache for young Grimes and teens grappling with similar circumstances. Growing up in circa 1950s and 1960s New York with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father Nikki found herself terrorized by babysitters shunted from foster family to foster family and preyed upon by her mother's second husband. At the age of six she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night -- and discovered the magic of writing. Through subsequent years her notebooks were her most enduring companions. In this remarkable memoir told in both poetry and prose Nikki explores her harrowing past showing how the power of words helped her conquer the hazards -- ordinary and extraordinary -- of life. "This powerful story told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth will help your heart grow." --Laurie Halse Anderson author of <i>Speak and Shout</i> "[A] testimony and a triumph." --Jason Reynolds author of <i>Long Way Down</i> <b>About the Author</b> An award-winning poet and author Nikki is the recipient of the ALA Children's Literature Legacy Award the NCTE Award for Poetry the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award the Coretta Scott King Author Award and five Coretta Scott King Author Honors. Books available for purchase and signing. Limit of 2 outside books allowed for signing per customer.