Jack Gantos

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Author of Newbery Medal-Winning DEAD END IN NORVELT, Award-Winning Young Adult prison memoir, HOLE IN MY LIFE, Award-Winning Middle Grade 'JOEY PIGZA' Series, and the 'ROTTEN RALPH' Picture Books and BBC Series
Professor of Children's Literature and Writing
Teaching In-Service for Creative Writing and Literature/All Ages

Award-winning author Jack Gantos is known as an entertaining and inspiring speaker who uses humor to engage audiences of all ages in the craft of storytelling. He has written over fifty books for readers of all ages, from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels and a gritty prison memoir. His works include Dead End in Norvelt, the 2012 Newbery Medal Winner and the Scott O’Dell Award Winner for Best Historic Fiction, Hole in My Life, a Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert Honors-Winner, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, and Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book. He delivers Creative Writing and Literature presentations at schools and universities both here and abroad and is a frequent speaker at teacher and literacy conferences.

Interview clip - Tips for Aspiring Writers | Mackin Educational [5:03] - Get Sharable Link

Interview clip - Tips for Aspiring Writers | Mackin Educational [5:03]

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Story Telling - Writing and Telling Great Stories with Jack Gantos | MacKids Books [15:38]

Keynote - Writing in the Boston Public Library and my literary life | Boston Public Library [50:45]

Profile Interview - Jack Gantos, Author | American Graduate DC [22:38]

Talks & Conversations with Jack Gantos

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Hole in My Life: From Prison to Publishing

How to turn what went wrong into a bestseller that went right. Many times, people have said to me with regret: “If only I could write a book about what happened to me …” Watch >>

Autobiography as Literature

Write about what you know about and turn your clever life into a book. Watch here and here >>

Writing Picture Books, Writing Short Stories, and/or Writing Novels for Young Readers and Teen Readers

Jack taught all these courses at Emerson College where he started and ran the Children’s Book Writing Program.

Books by Jack Gantos

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Biography

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Jack Gantos has written books for readers of all ages, from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels for young adults and adults. His works include Hole in My Life, a memoir that won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert honors; Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book, and Dead End in Norvelt, the 2012 Newbery Medal Winner, and the Scott O’Dell Award Winner for Best Historic Fiction.

Jack was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the nearby town of Norvelt. He remembers playing a lot of “pass the chalk” in Mrs. Neiderheizer’s class in first grade. He was in the Bluebird reading group, which he later found out was for the slow readers. To this day he’d rather be called a Bluebird than a slow reader. His favorite game at that time was playing his clothes were on fire and rolling down a hill to save himself.

When he was seven, his family moved to Barbados. He attended British schools, where there was much emphasis on reading and writing. Students were friendly but fiercely competitive, and the teachers made learning a lot of fun. By fifth grade he had managed to learn 90 percent of what he knows to this very day.

When the family moved to south Florida, he found his new classmates uninterested in their studies, and his teachers spent most of their time disciplining students. Jack retreated to an abandoned bookmobile (three flat tires and empty of books) parked out behind the sandy ball field, and read for most of the day. His greatest wish in life is to replace trailer parks with bookmobile parks, which he thinks will eliminate most of the targets for tornadoes and educate an entire generation of great kids who now go to schools that are underfunded and substandard.

As recounted in Heads or Tails, his first book of “Jack Henry” stories inspired by his own childhood journals. The seeds for Jack’s writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister’s diary and decided he could write better than she could. He begged his mother for a diary and began to collect anecdotes he overheard at school, mostly from standing outside the teachers’ lounge and listening to their lunchtime conversations. Later, he incorporated many of these anecdotes into his stories.

In junior high, Jack went to a school that had been converted from a former state prison. He thinks the inmates probably fled for their lives once the students showed up. Again, he spent most of his time reading on his own and, like “Harriet” in Harriet the Spy, he spied on all his “low supervision” neighbors and wrote down their lunatic activities (a lot of gore and broken bones and bizarre games).

Jack decided to become a writer in high school, but he would have to wait another three years—until he went to college—before he could actually meet other writers and study with teachers who thought writing amounted to more than just cribbing book reports and composing sympathy notes.

While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of well-deserved rejections, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. It was a success and the beginning of Jack’s career as a professional writer. This surprised a great many people who thought he was going to specialize in rehabilitating old bookmobiles into housing for retired librarians.

Jack continued to write children’s books and began to teach courses in children’s book writing and children’s literature. He developed the master’s degree program in children’s book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children’s book writers. He now devotes his time to writing books and educational speaking.

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