Penguin Random House: Jacqueline Woodson Named Kennedy Center’s Next Education Artist-in-Residence

This week the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts unveiled special 50th Anniversary programming and new initiatives, including naming Penguin Random House author Jacqueline Woodson the Kennedy Center’s next Education Artist-in-Residence. Woodson, winner of the Newbery Honor, National Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, will begin her residency in January 2022, and be involved with creative programming across multiple genres, forms, and spaces, and seen in both in the Washington, D.C. area and nationally.

During the Kennedy Centers 50th Anniversary season, two of Woodson’s books that have helped transform the future of children’s literature will be adapted for the stage: her Newbery–winning 2005 title, Show Way, about a tradition passed down by the women in Woodson’s family that remembers the past and celebrates the future, will be adapted by the author as a book in concert with new music by Tyrone L. Robinson in February 2022; and, in April of 2022, The Other Side, Woodson’s 2001 book that tells a tale of two girls who begin a friendship from opposite sides of a fence that separates their segregated town, will be staged in a co-commission with HopeBoykinDance. Additional 50th Anniversary season programming with Woodson will be announced at a future date.