Valiska Gregory

Children Award-winning poet and children’s book author Valiska Gregory has published more than a dozen books for children. Translated in seven different languages, her books have received Parents’ Choice Awards, been chosen for the American Booksellers’ “Pick of the Lists,” and featured on PBS national television. Gregory regularly reviews children’s books for Publishers Weekly and speaks at schools, libraries, and conferences across the country.

According to reviewers, Ms. Gregory’s work ranges from picture and chapter books full of “kid pleasing humor and plenty of action” to poignant books for all ages that are “told with a contagious sense of wonder.”  Her writing has been called “shining and magical” with “language and phrasing . . . as pleasing to the ear as the story is to the heart.”

A member of Authors Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Ms. Gregory has an M.A. from the University of Chicago and has taught every grade from kindergarten to seniors in college. She received a grant for “artistic excellence and achievements” from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and her poetry manuscripts (for adults) are housed in the rare book room at the University of Wisconsin with the Juniper Press collection.  Ms. Gregory was a Writer-in-residence at Butler University and the founding director of the Butler Children’s Literature Conference.