Last night Momma and Pops kept saying that they should have told me what they had to tell me sooner.It's what people who heven't told the truth always say...

—FROM Heaven

Winner of the 1999 Coretta Scott King Author Award.

Angela Johnson, born on June 18, 1961 in Tuskegee Alabama once commented: "I don't believe the magic of listening to Wilma Mitchell read us stories after lunch will ever be repeated for me. Book people came to life. They sat beside me in Maple Grove School. That is when I knew. I asked for a diary that year and have not stopped writing. My family, especially my grandfather and father, are storytellers and those spoken words sit beside me too.

"In high school I wrote punk poetry that went with my razor blade necklace. At that point in my life my writing was personal and angry. I didn't want anyone to like it. I didn't want to be in the school literary magazine, or to be praised for something that I really didn't want understood. Of course, ten years later, I hope that my writing is universal and speaks to everyone who reads it. I still have the necklace, though."

Johnson attended Kent State University and has worked with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Ravenna, OH, as a child development worker, 1981-82; and is currently a free-lance writer of children's books.