He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Sanovia, and their children. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama, among other honors.

Yusef is now a poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. Now known as the Exonerated Five, their story has been documented in the award-winning film The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon and in Ava DuVernay’s highly acclaimed series When They See Us. In 2002, after the young men spent years of their lives behind bars, their sentences were overturned. Yusef Salaam was just fifteen years old when his life was upended after being wrongly convicted with four other boys in the “Central Park jogger” case. Born in Haiti and raised in New York City, she now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children. You can find her online at Dr. She is also the author of Pride and My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, a New York Times bestseller. She is the editor of the anthology Black Enough. Her novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Ibi Zoboi holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth in a system designed to strip him of both. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Then, one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy.

But even in a diverse art school, because of a biased system he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated. One of the most acclaimed YA novels of the year, this New York Times and USA Today bestseller is a must-read for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo and is now available in paperback!Īmal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. New York Times and USA Today bestseller * Goodreads Finalist for Best Teen Book of the Year * Time Magazine Best Book of the Year * Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * New York Public Library Best Book of the Yearįrom award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated.

Monster walter dean myers prologue