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Photo by Shevaun Williams

Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many verse novels, including Wild Dreamers, longlisted for the National Book Award, and The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor Book. Other awards include Pura Belpré Medals, Walter Honors, Américas Awards, the Jane Addams Award, PEN USA, and the NSK Neustadt Prize. Margarita served as the national 2017–2019 Young People’s Poet Laureate. Her most recent picture book is Eloísa’s Musical Window, and her next verse novel is Island Creatures. Engle studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing and now lives in central California with her entomologist husband and soccer-playing border collie.