Summer Salon Spotlight: Jacqueline Woodson in Conversation with Patrick Nolan at the Fine Arts Work Center
The Fine Arts Work Center is honored to welcome the celebrated author Jacqueline Woodson back to Provincetown for a special evening in our 2025 Summer Salon series. Woodson, a former Visual Arts Fellow and one of the most influential voices in contemporary literature, will be joined in conversation by Patrick Nolan, Publisher of Penguin Books and trustee of the Fine Arts Work Center.
The Summer Salons at the Fine Arts Work Center are more than a series- they are an invitation into deep thought, creative vitality, and meaningful exchange. Held in the intimate setting of the Stanley Kunitz Common Room, each Salon gathers major voices in arts and culture for public conversations that inspire and connect.
On Friday, June 27, Woodson will read from her work and sit down with Nolan for a wide-ranging discussion of her writing life and extraordinary body of work. With dozens of award-winning books for readers of all ages, Woodson has reshaped the literary landscape and deepened the way we think about identity, memory, and imagination. Her accolades include the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the National Book Award, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and numerous Coretta Scott King Awards, Newbery Honors, and NAACP Image Awards.
In Woodson’s memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, the winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller, the author offers a poignant reflection on her early years.
As Woodson writes:
“I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm’s—raised and fisted or Martin’s—open and asking or James’s—curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa’s or Ruby’s—gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world . . .”
This special event will begin with a reception in our courtyard at 5:00 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:00 PM. The event will include a moderated audience Q&A and a book signing with the author. Registration is required.
The Fine Arts Work Center is proud to celebrate Jacqueline Woodson and her return to a place that once nurtured her voice and her continued work to uplift the world through story.
Space is available, but seats fill up fast! Don’t miss your chance to join us for this transformative event here.
Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and is the recipient of a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She is the 2022 Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, which also received the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Year We Learned to Fly, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me; The Other Side; Each Kindness; Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. In 2018, she founded BALDWIN FOR THE ARTS (baldwinforthearts.org), a residency serving writers, composers, interdisciplinary, and visual artists of the Global Majority. Her most recent novel, Remember Us, is set in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Patrick Nolan is Vice President, Publisher of Penguin Books and imprint of Penguin Random House. He joined the company in 2000 as sales director and is now the book-publishing right hand to Viking, overseeing their paperback reprints and a select list of Penguin trade paperback originals as well as the backlist. As publisher, the authors he works with includes Amor Towles, Tana French, Rebecca Makkai, Ruth Ozeki, Bessel van der Kolk, and Robert Greene and the estates of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and John Steinbeck. The authors he edits includes Roddy Doyle, Matt Haig, Rio Cortez, Donal Ryan, Mark Wolynn, Keyu Jin, and Christopher Castellani. Nolan is a trustee of the Fine Arts Work Center.
