Jane Yolen

Early life

Jane Hyatt Yolen was born on February 11, 1939 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. 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. 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's, 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, including Yolen's brother, Steven Hyatt Yolen, who was born three and a half years later.

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 as American Tragedy and Knut Rockne. The family moved back to New York City prior to the birth of Yolen's brother, Steve. When Will joined the Army as a Second Lieutenant to fight in England during World War II, Yolen, her mother and brother lived with her grandparents, Danny and Dan, in Newport News, Virginia. After the war, the family moved back to Manhattan, living on Central Park West and 97th Street until Yolen turned 13. She attended PS 93, where she enjoyed writing and singing, and became friends with future radio presenter Susan 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 to Music and Art High School. During the summer prior to that semester, she attended a Vermont summer camp, which was her first involvement with the Society of Friends (Quakers). Her family also moved to a large ranch house in Westport, Connecticut, where she attended Bedford Junior high for ninth grade, and then Staples High School, where she sang in the choir, was captain of the girls' basketball team, was News Editor of the school paper, and vice president of the Spanish and Latin Clubs. After graduating she attended Smith College. Though she says she did not have the highest grades, she wrote a book of poetry, was President of the Press Board, and participated in school musicals and other shows as an actress and by writing song lyrics. After graduating she moved back to New York City.

Career

Although Yolen considered herself a poet, journalist and nonfiction writer, she became a children's book writer. Her first published book was Pirates in Petticoats, which was published on her 22nd birthday.

Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, Favorite Folktales From Around the World, Xanadu and Xanadu 2 are among the works that she has edited.

Her book Naming Liberty, tells the story of a Russian girl and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty.

She has co-written two books with her son, the writer and musician Adam Stemple, Pay the Piper and Troll Bridge, both part of the Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale series. She also wrote lyrics for the song "Robin's Complaint," recorded on the 1994 album Antler Dance by Stemple's band Boiled in Lead.

Regarding the similarities between her novel Wizard's Hall, and the Harry Potter series, Yolen has commented on J.K. Rowling, the author of that series:

I'm pretty sure she 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."

Personal life

In 1962, Yolen married David W. Stemple. They had three children and six grandchildren. Stemple died in March 2006. Yolen lives in Western Massachusetts next door to her daughter, Heidi. She also owns a house in Scotland, where she lives for about four months each year.

Awards

Nominations

The Pit Dragon Chronicles

1. Dragon's Blood (1982)
2. Heart's Blood (1984)
3. A Sending of Dragons (1987)
4. Dragon's Heart (2009)

Selected novels and books

Selected films

Selected novellas and novelettes

Selected poems

Short story anthologies edited by Jane Yolen

Folklore collection edited by Jane Yolen