Dhonielle Clayton | |
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Born | 1983 (age 40–41) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
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dhonielleclayton |
Dhonielle Clayton (born 1983) is an American author and chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books. She has written multiple book series, including The Belles (2018-2023). She also collaborated with Tiffany D. Jackson, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon to write Blackout (2021).
Clayton was born in Washington, D.C. She went to Our Lady Of Good Counsel in Wheaton, Maryland. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Wake Forest University in 2005, a Master of Arts from Hollins University in 2008, and Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from The New School in 2012. [1] [2]
Beyond writing, Clayton is president and owner of Cake Creative and Electric Postcard Entertainment, two boutique book packagers and Chief Operating Officer of We Need Diverse Books, [3] which seeks to increase representations of marginalized groups in children and young adult literature. [4] She also works as a sensitivity reader for children's literature and works to identify stereotypes or inauthentic portrayals of Black characters. [5] [6] She has also advocated for books to better represent people of color. [7] [8]
In 2019, Clayton and Zoraida Córdova started a podcast together called Deadline City. Together they co-host episodes and talk about publishing topics and their own experiences in publishing. [9]
In 2019, Clayton attracted criticism for negative Tweets about a student of Northern State University, who had advocated for the inclusion of three books by persons of colour, including Bryan Stevenson's memoir Just Mercy about racial injustice, instead of a YA novel by Sarah Dessen, in the university's "Common Reads" program. Clayton later deleted the tweets. [10] [11]
Clayton co-authored the Tiny Pretty Things series with Sona Charaipotra. [4] [12] The series, which debuted in 2015, follows three teenage dance students at New York's American Ballet Company. [13] [14] Kirkus referred to volume one as "a page-turner with heart." [15]
In 2020, Tiny Pretty Things made its debut on Netflix as a series. [16] [17]
The Belles series consists of three novels: The Belles (2018), The Everlasting Rose (2019) and The Beauty Trials (2023). The series was inspired by Clayton's interest as a teenager in magazines, beauty and how they affected the way she viewed herself later. The fantasy young adult novel centers a 16-year-old girl and her sisters, tasked with restoring beauty to a colorless grey world. [18] [19] [20]
Blackout, co-authored with Tiffany D. Jackson, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon, was published June 22, 2021 by Quill Tree Books. The authors have cited the book as being Clayton's "brainchild." [21]
Blackout is currently slated to become a movie and TV show produced by the Obamas for Netflix. [22]
In 2021, Clayton won the IGNYTE Awards' Ember Award for Unsung Contributions to Genre. [23] [24]
Four of Clayton's books are Junior Library Guild selections: The Belles (2018) [25] and The Everlasting Rose (2019), [26] as well as the book and audiobook editions of Blackout (2021). [27] [28]
The Belles book was a New York Times bestseller. The Chicago Public Library (CPL) [29] and Kirkus Reviews [18] named it one of the best young adult books of 2018. CPL also included it on their list of the best teen book covers of the year. [30]
The Marvellers was a New York Times bestseller. [31] Kirkus Reviews named it one of the best young adult books of 2022. [31]
Blackout was named one of the best young adult novels of 2021 by Publishers Weekly . [32]
Year | Work | Award | Result | Ref. |
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2018 | The Belles | Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth | Selection | [33] |
Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction | Nominee | [34] | ||
2019 | ALA Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults | Selection | [35] | |
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults | Selection | [36] [37] | ||
Children's & Teen Choice Book Awards | Finalist | [38] | ||
Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book | Nominee | [39] | ||
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book | Nominee | [40] | ||
2020 | Black Enough | Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults | Selection | [41] |
The Everlasting Rose | IGNYTE Award for Best Young Adult Novel | Nominee | [42] | |
2022 | Blackout | ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults | Top 10 | [43] [44] |
Audie Award for Short Stories or Collections | Winner | [45] | ||
Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers | Selection | [46] | ||
The Marvellers | Cybils Award for Elementary and Middle Grade Speculative Fiction | Finalist | [47] | |
2023 | The Rumor Game | Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers | Selection | [48] |
Each of the books in The Mirror series is authored by a different author. Clayton authored the second book in the series.
Julia May Whelan is an American actress, narrator and author. As an actress, she is best known for her role as Grace Manning on the television family drama series Once and Again (1999–2002), and her co-starring role in the 2002 Lifetime movie The Secret Life of Zoey. A noted child actor, Whelan first appeared on screen at the age of 11 and continued to take television roles until her matriculation into Middlebury College in 2004; Whelan graduated magna cum laude from Middlebury in 2008 after spending the 2006–2007 academic year as a visiting student at Lincoln College, Oxford. Whelan returned to film acting in November 2008 with a role in the fantasy thriller Fading of the Cries. In the 2010s, Whelan stepped away from her acting career to become an audiobook narrator. As of July 2022, she has narrated over 400 audiobooks. In 2018, she published her debut novel My Oxford Year.
January LaVoy is an American actress and audiobook narrator. As an actress, she is most recognized as Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. LaVoy made her Broadway debut in the Broadway premiere of the play Enron at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 27, 2010.
The Margaret A. Edwards Award is an American Library Association (ALA) literary award that annually recognizes an author and "a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". It is named after Margaret A. Edwards (1902–1988), the longtime director of young adult services at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
Norah McClintock was a Canadian writer of young adult fiction who published more than 60 books. She won five Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence.
Adam Gidwitz is an American author of children's books, best known for A Tale Dark and Grimm (2010), In a Glass Grimmly (2012), and The Grimm Conclusion (2013). He received a 2017 Newbery Honor for The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog (2016). In 2021, his book A Tale Dark and Grimm was adapted into an animated miniseries on Netflix.
The American Library Association's (ALA) Best Fiction for Young Adults, previously known as Best Books for Young Adults (1966–2010), is a recommendation list of books presented yearly by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) division. It is for "fiction titles published for young adults in the past 16 months that are recommended reading for ages 12 to 18. The purpose of the annual list it to provide librarians and library workers with a resource to use for collection development and readers advisory purposes." In addition there is a "Best of the Best" list of the top 10 titles, made available since 1997.
Nicola Yoon is a Jamaican-American author. She is best known for writing the 2015 young adult novel Everything, Everything, a New York Times best seller and the basis of a 2017 film of the same name. In 2016, she released The Sun Is Also a Star, a novel that was adapted to a film of the same name.
Angie Thomas is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019.
Julie Berry is an American author of children's and young adults books and winner of several national book awards.
Samira Ahmed is an American author of young adult fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, best known for her New York Times best selling novels Love, Hate & Other Filters and Internment.
Rebecca Roanhorse is an American science fiction and fantasy writer from New Mexico. She has written short stories and science fiction novels featuring Navajo characters. Her work has received Hugo and Nebula awards, among others.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Sona Charaipotra is an American entertainment and lifestyle journalist, screenwriter, and a bestselling author of young adult fiction. She was an editor at People, Parents.com, and other major media, and is best known for her YA lit column on Parade.com and her YA series Tiny Pretty Things.
Kekla Magoon is an American author, best known for her NAACP Image Award-nominated young adult novel The Rock and the River, How It Went Down, The Season of Styx Malone, and X. In 2021, she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her body of work. Her works also include middle grade novels, short stories, and historical, socio-political, and economy-related non-fiction.
Tiny Pretty Things is an American drama television series based on the novel of the same name by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton, created by Michael MacLennan. It premiered on Netflix on December 14, 2020, and aired for one season.
Tracey Baptiste is a children's horror author from the Caribbean who uses folk stories in her novels.
Ashley Woodfolk is an American writer. She is the author of the young adult books The Beauty That Remains (2018) and When You Were Everything (2020).
Blackout is a young adult novel written by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. The book contains six interlinked stories about Black teen love during a power outage in New York City. The book was released on June 22, 2021.
The Belles is a dystopian young adult novel series by Dhonielle Clayton, consisting of three books: The Belles (2018), The Everlasting Rose (2019) and The Beauty Trials (2023). The first two books are Junior Library Guild selections.
Don Brown is an American author and illustrator of children's books.
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