By Kevin Greer
Lakeside Communications Manager
As a child, Kwame Alexander dreamed of becoming a pediatrician. He admired his own doctor, who made children laugh while helping them feel better, and Alexander wanted to do the same.
Then came organic chemistry.
“It kicked my butt, man,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘I don’t think this is for me.'”
That unexpected turn did not end his dream of helping children. Instead, it led him to discover a different calling through storytelling.
Today, Alexander is one of the most celebrated voices in children’s literature. The No. 1 New York Times bestselling author has written 44 books and received the Newbery Medal, a Coretta Scott King Book Award Honor, the Caldecott Medal and the 2025 NAACP Image Award. His groundbreaking novel The Crossover earned the Newbery Medal before becoming an Emmy Award-winning Disney+ series.
Alexander will make his first appearance at Lakeside on Thursday, July 16, as part of the Keynote Speaker Series at 7:30 p.m. in Hoover Auditorium. He will also host a book signing from 3-4 p.m. at Millie Magoo’s & The Fine Print.
His books, including The Undefeated, Why Fathers Cry at Night, The Door of No Return and Becoming Muhammad Ali, have reached readers around the world. His newest book, Say Yes!, encourages graduates, creatives and professionals to embrace opportunity with courage, a message that mirrors his own life.
Growing up with books
Alexander’s love of writing began almost as early as he can remember.
“Probably age 3, when my mother introduced me to Dr. Seuss,” he says. “Both of my parents were writers, so I grew up in a very literary household. Books were a big part of our lives. I was always well-read and enjoyed writing. I didn’t decide to become a writer as a profession until my junior year in college.
His parents each introduced him to literature in different ways.
“My father made me read the dictionary, encyclopedia and his dissertations. Reading was a chore. It was boring, staid and incomprehensible, and I loathed it. My mother, contrarily, told stories like African folktales and read poetry with me. My father made it functional, and my mother made it fun. I had this really interesting dichotomy in literature. A love-loathe relationship with it. I don’t really tell people that I found writing or poetry; it found me. I think they nurtured and prepared me,” he shares.
His parents like to say that Alexander was an experiment. They tried to figure out how to immerse their son in a world of literature and see how it could transform his life, helping him become a confident man who could find his voice and lift it for the things that mattered to him. The experiment worked.
Finding his voice
Although organic chemistry convinced Alexander that medicine was not the right path, another college class changed his life.
At Virginia Tech, he studied under acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni.
“I had a really amazing professor, and she was a brilliant poet,” he explains. “I took three of her classes, and it literally changed my life. She became a model for what I wanted to be and how I wanted to do it. It started in her advanced poetry class that I took in 1988.”
Alexander graduated with degrees in psychology, English and Black studies, but success as an author did not happen overnight. His first 12 books were written for adults and self-published, but they sold only modestly.
Everything changed after the birth of his second daughter, Samaya.
“It wasn’t until 2008, when Samaya was born, that I began to write poems and stories for her as a toddler,” he says. “Then my writing sensibilities changed, and by 2015, when she was 7, I wrote a children’s book that would change my life. Samaya is the inspiration and impetus for me to begin writing children’s books, because that’s when my career took off. That’s when I was able to make a living, and that’s when I won all the awards. Children’s literature became something I never thought I would do, and 47 books later, I still love doing it.”
Stories inspired by life
Alexander says every story begins differently. One of his best-known series started because his young daughter would not stop crying.
“I called my mother, and she told me I should sing to her, but I can’t sing,” he recalls. “Then she told me to play some music, so I put on Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis records and played a bunch of jazz. She fell asleep, and it was amazing. That became our routine; we listened to jazz together.”
That experience inspired Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band, which later became an Emmy nominated PBS special.
His travels have also shaped his work.
Alexander has visited Ghana 11 times, an experience that inspired The Door of No Return and Solo. His commitment to literacy also led him to establish the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana while supporting literacy initiatives around the world.
“I think one of the best books I’ve written, which took about 12 years to write, is called The Door of No Return. It’s a novel set in Ghana in the year 1860 about a 12-year-old boy. I’ve been to Ghana 11 times. I love the food, the ocean, the energy and the music of that place. It’s just electric. Spending so much time there, it had to come out in some way. I’m really proud of that book,” he says.
Inspiring young readers
Alexander believes children around the world have far more in common than many adults realize.
“That they’re all alike,” Alexander says. “They laugh, eat, dance, walk, joke, study and love. They live just like everybody else. The kids want to be seen and want others to know that they matter. They want to know that you care about them. They want to be loved, engaged and inspired. The adults think they are different, but the kids are pretty much the same. I try to respect that and treat them all the same, with respect and love.”
That belief shapes every book he writes.
“I write books that I’m going to love, that are going to inspire, engage and empower me,” he explains. “My hope is that it happens to kids when they read them. What they get out of it, who knows? I hope it’s something that they didn’t have before they read the book. That’s important to me.”
Alexander also believes adults often underestimate young readers.
“Adults believe kids can’t handle heavy topics, that we need to talk down to them, and that they don’t like poetry,” Alexander says. “I think there are a plethora of things, and I don’t subscribe to any of them. I’m writing about kids, but I’m writing for 12-year-old Kwame, and if I love it, I feel like it’s a strong chance kids will too.”
When asked about the biggest barrier to literacy, he pointed to the importance of helping children discover books they genuinely want to read.
“The first thing is that we are so focused on getting kids to read that we perhaps forget the goal should be to get them to want to read,” Alexander shares. “If we’re so focused on making sure kids are reading books, we deem valuable and necessary, we forget about student choice and letting kids find the book that excites them and makes them want to pick up another.”
His advice to aspiring writers is equally straightforward.
“You have to read,” he says. “The way you become a better writer is by reading other writers and learning what does and doesn’t work. An amazing poet named T.S. Eliot said, ‘Immature writers imitate, and mature writers steal.’ Find the stuff that you want to read and read it.”
Whether through poetry, picture books, novels or keynote presentations, Alexander continues to inspire readers to find their own voices, one story at a time.
