About Kerry


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WRITER | TEACHER |ESSAYIST


I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.

-Jacqueline Woodson

Kerry Madden-Lunsford is an author, teacher, and essayist. Her upcoming middle grade novel, Werewolf Hamlet, Charlesbridge Moves, will arrive February 18, 2025. Her other books include the picture book, Ernestine’s Milky Way, Random House Studios (originally published by Schwartz & Wade). She also wrote Maggie Valley Trilogy for children, which includes Gentle’s Holler, Louisiana’s Song and Jessie’s Mountain, published by Viking. Her first novel, Offsides, (Morrow) was a New York Public Library Pick for the Teen Age. Her book, Up Close Harper Lee, made Booklist’s Ten Top Biographies of 2009 for Youth. Her first picture book, Nothing Fancy About Kathryn and Charlie, was illustrated by her daughter, Lucy, and published by Mockingbird Publishers. Kerry is a professor of creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a regular contributor to the LA Times OpEd Page. She is the mother of three children. After living for thirty-five years in Los Angeles, Kerry currently lives with her husband in Birmingham. Interesting fact: In their first year of marriage, she and her husband taught English in Ningbo, China.

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I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten-happy, absorbed, and quietly putting one bead on after another.

- Brenda Ueland


Photography and website design by Lucy Lunsford