Jane Yolen | |
|---|---|
 Yolen in 2011 | |
| Born | (1939-02-11)February 11, 1939 (age 86) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, poet |
| Alma mater | Smith College |
| Period | 1960s–present |
| Genre | Fantasy, science fiction,folklore,children's fiction |
| Notable awards | World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement |
| Website | |
| janeyolen | |
Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She is the author or editor of more than 400 books, of which the best known isThe Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella.[1][2] Her other works include theNebula Award−winning short story "Sister Emily's Lightship", the novelette "Lost Girls",Owl Moon,The Emperor and the Kite, and theCommander Toad series. She has collaborated on works with all three of her children, most extensively with Adam Stemple.[1]
Yolen delivered the inauguralAlice G. Smith Lecture at theUniversity of South Florida in 1989. In 2012 she became the first woman to give theAndrew Lang lecture.[3] Yolen published her 400th book in early 2021,Bear Outside.[4]
Jane Hyatt Yolen was born on February 11, 1939, atBeth Israel Medical Center inManhattan. She is the first child of Isabell Berlin Yolen, a psychiatric social worker who became a full-time mother and homemaker upon Yolen's birth, and Will Hyatt Yolen, a journalist who wrote columns at the time for New York newspapers,[5] and whose family emigrated from Ukraine to the United States.[1] Both of Yolen's parents were Jewish, and raised her secular-Jewish.[6] Isabell also did volunteer work, and wrote short stories in her spare time. However, she was not able to sell them. Because the Hyatts, the family of Yolen's grandmother, Mina Hyatt Yolen, only had girls, a number of the children of Yolen's generation were given their last name as a middle name in order to perpetuate it.[5]
When Yolen was barely one year old, the family moved to California to accommodate Will's new job working for Hollywood film studios, doing publicity on films such asAmerican Tragedy andKnut Rockne. The family moved back to New York City prior to the birth of Yolen's brother, Steve. When Will joined the Army as aSecond Lieutenant to fight in England duringWorld War II, Yolen, her mother and brother lived with her grandparents, Danny and Dan, inNewport News, Virginia. After the war, the family moved back to Manhattan, living onCentral Park West and 97th Street until Yolen turned 13. She attendedPS 93, where she enjoyed writing and singing, and became friends with future radio presenterSusan Stamberg. She also engaged writing by creating a newspaper for her apartment with her brother that she sold for five cents a copy. She was accepted toMusic and Art High School. During the summer prior to that semester, she attended a Vermontsummer camp, which was her first involvement with theSociety of Friends (Quakers). Her family also moved to a ranch house inWestport, Connecticut, where she attended Bedford Junior high for ninth grade, and thenStaples High School.[5] She received a BA fromSmith College in 1960 and amaster's degree in Education from theUniversity of Massachusetts in 1978.[1] After graduating she moved back to New York City.[5]
Although Yolen considered herself a poet and a journalist/nonfiction writer, to her surprise she became a children's book writer. Her first published book wasPirates in Petticoats, which she sold on her 22nd birthday, February 11, 1961.[5]
During the 1960s, Yolen held editorial positions at various magazines and publishers in New York City, including Gold Medal Books, Routledge Books, and Alfred A. Knopf Juvenile Books. From 1990 to 1996 she ran her ownyoung adult fiction imprint, Jane Yolen Books, atHarcourt Brace.[1]
She has co-written two books with her son, the writer and musicianAdam Stemple,Pay the Piper andTroll Bridge, both part of the Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale series.[7] She also wrote lyrics for the song "Robin's Complaint," recorded on the 1994 albumAntler Dance by Stemple's bandBoiled in Lead.[8]
As of 2021, Yolen has written more than 400 books.[4]
In 1962, Yolen married David W. Stemple. They had three children, including musicianAdam Stemple, and six grandchildren. David Stemple died in March 2006. Yolen lives inHatfield, Massachusetts. She also owns a house in Scotland, where she lives for a few months each year.[1][5]
Regarding the similarities between her 1991 novelWizard's Hall and theHarry Potter series, Yolen has commented:
I'm pretty sure [J. K. Rowling] never read my book. We were both using fantasy tropes—the wizard school, the pictures on the wall that move. I happen to have a hero whose name was Henry, not Harry. He also had a red-headed best friend and a girl who was also his best friend—though my girl was black, not white. And there was a wicked wizard who was trying to destroy the school, who was once a teacher at the school. But those are all fantasy tropes ...There's even a book that came out way before hers where children go off to a witch school or a wizard school by going on a mysterious train that no one else can see except the kids, at a major British train station—I don’t know if it was Victoria Station or King's Cross. These things are out there ...This is not new.[3]
