Arnold Adoff, the recipient of the sixth annual Virginia Hamilton Literary Award, is America’s chief poetry scout for young readers and their older allies. For forty years he has been at work raising the standards of poetry for children and adolescents as he showcases the works of visionary cultural poets through his anthologies and proclaims cultural identity through his own bold, experimental free verse collections.  Whether he’s celebrating the lives of African American and interracial families, young people in sports, the joys of cooking and eating, or the pleasures and pains of adolescence, his vision reaches out to encompass human diversity in all of its possibilities.  As he himself has pointed out, all of his work has been driven by his mission to bring about change, to realize full freedom for all Americans.

He has said, “Writing a poem is making music with words and space.”  To make this music happen, he creates jazz-like riffs of sound and shape that entice both the eye and the ear.  Using daring strokes of language and form, he challenges the reader to capture the unique beat and rhythm of his poetic scores through live performance.  Drawing attention to his unconventional style, he has said, “I have incorporated the concept of time in my writing by the use of space. The millesecond that it takes the eyes to move forward is an aspect of time. Time is the music or the rhythmic force and that, I think, is a step forward in the medium.”
 

Arnold Adoff was raised by Russian immigrant parents in the South Bronx who valued their Jewish heritage and liberal causes, and prized the roles of women in society. He received a BA degree from the City College of New York and then, for a period of time, studied history at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. During this time he met and married author Virginia Hamilton. As a social studies teacher for twelve years in Harlem and the Upper West Side of New York, he became aware of the lack of African American literature in the schools and decided to do something about it.  At this time, he became an aficionado of Black poetry which led to his first anthology, I am the Darker Brother. This book was recently updated to include the poems of Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Ishmail Reed, and Alice Walker.  At the same time he was anthologizing others' poetry, he also was practicing his own craft. 

His anthologies and collections have received numerous awards. American Library Association “Best Book” honors have been awarded to All the Colors of the Race, Street Music: City Poems, and Love Letters.  Street Music: City Poems was also chosen as a Best Book for Young Adults. Love Letters, illustrated by Lisa Desimini, was also an American Bookseller “Pick of the Lists,” a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book, and was listed as a best book of the year the New York Public Library, Publisher’s Weekly, and School Library Journal. In 1988, Arnold Adoff received the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Poetry for Children for the body of his work.   
The Advisory Board of the Virginia Hamilton Conference is proud to honor Arnold Adoff with the Literary Award for the integrity of his artistic vision, his contribution to the field of multicultural literature by bringing attention to the voice of African American poets, his infectious passion for and love of poetry, and his untiring support of new talent in the field of children’s and young adult literature.