Authors

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including Wild Dreamers, a Pura Belpré Honor book that was also long listed for the National Book Award. Wings in the Wild received an International Latino Book Award Gold Medal, and The Surrender Tree, received a Newbery Honor.

Other awards includes Pura Belpré Medals, Walter Honors, Américas Awards, a Jane Addams Award, a PEN U.S.A. Award, and the NSK Neustadt Prize. Margarita served as the national  2017-2019 Young People's Poet Laureate. Her newest picture books include Hopeful Heroes and Christiana Figueres, Friend of the Rain Forest. Her most recent verse novels areIsland Creatures and Evamar.

Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother's homeland during childhood summers with relatives on the island. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing, and now lives in central California with her entomologist husband and soccer playing Border Collie.