Margarita Engle

Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many verse books, including a Newbery Honor winner, The Surrender Tree; a PEN USA Award winner, The Lightning Dreamer; and a verse memoir, Enchanted Air, winner of many awards, including an inaugural Walter Dean Myers Award Honor. Margarita's books have also received three Pura Belpré Awards and four Américas Awards, as well as a Jane Addams Award, International Reading Association Award, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award. In 2017, the Poetry Foundation named her the Young People's Poet Laureate. Margarita grew up in Los Angeles but developed a deep attachment to her mother's homeland during summers with her extended family in Cuba. She was trained as a botanist and agronomist before becoming a full-time poet and novelist.