Margarita Engle (born in Los Angeles, California on September 2, 1951) is a Cuban American poet and author of many award-winning books for children, young adults and adults. Most of Engle's stories are written in verse and are a reflection of her Cuban heritage and her deep appreciation and knowledge of nature. She became the first Latino awarded a Newbery Honor in 2009 for The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. She was selected by the Poetry Foundation to serve from 2017 to 2019 as the sixth Young People's Poet Laureate. On October 9, 2018, Margarita Engle was announced the winner of the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. She was nominated by 2019 NSK Prize jury member Lilliam Rivera. Her 2024 book, Wild Dreamers, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Early life

Engle's father was born in Los Angeles, California and her mother in Trinidad, Cuba. Although Engle was born and raised in California, growing up, she spent many summers with her extended family in Cuba. As a child, she was introduced to poetry in Spanish, particularly the works of José Martí.

Career

Engle earned a B.S. from California State Polytechnic University in 1974, an M.S. from Iowa State University in 1977, and nearly completed a doctoral degree in biology from the University of California, Riverside in 1983. Before starting her writing career, Engle was a tenured professor of agronomy at California Polytechnic University. While working on her doctoral degree, she took a seminar in creative writing with Tomás Rivera, and credits this experience with igniting her passion to write. She lives in Central California, where she enjoys helping her husband with his volunteer work for wilderness search and rescue dog training programs.

Awards

Entire body of work (2019) THE POET SLAVE OF CUBA, A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano (Henry Holt & Co., 2006) THE SURRENDER TREE, Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom (Henry Holt & Co., 2008) TROPICAL SECRETS, Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (Henry Holt & Co., 2009) THE FIREFLY LETTERS, A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba (Henry Holt & Co., 2010) SUMMER BIRDS, The Butterflies of Maria Merian (Henry Holt & Co., 2010, picture book) HURRICANE DANCERS, The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck (Henry Holt & Co., 2011) **DRUM DREAM GIRL, ** (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt., 2015) **ENCHANTED AIR: TWO CULTURES, TWO WINGS: A MEMOIR ** (Simon and Schuster., 2015) **FOREST WORLD ** (Simon and Schuster., 2017)

Selected works