Press Kit

Avi is part of a fam­i­ly of writ­ers extend­ing back into the 19th cen­tu­ry. Born in 1937 and raised in New York City, Avi was edu­cat­ed in local schools, before going to the Mid­west and then back to NYC to com­plete his edu­ca­tion. Start­ing out as a playwright—while work­ing for many years as a librarian—he began writ­ing books for young peo­ple when the first of his kids came along.

His first book was Things That Some­times Hap­pen, pub­lished in 1970, recent­ly reis­sued. Since then he has pub­lished more than sev­en­ty books. Win­ner of many awards, includ­ing the 2003 New­bery award for Crispin: the Cross of Lead (Hype­r­i­on), two New­bery Hon­ors, two Horn Book awards, and an O’Dell award, as well as many children’s choice awards, Avi fre­quent­ly trav­els to schools around the coun­try to talk to his readers.

Among his most pop­u­lar books are Crispin: The Cross of Lead, The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle, Noth­ing But the Truth, the Pop­py books, Mid­night Mag­ic, and The Fight­ing Ground.

His most recent books are Lost in the Empire City, The Secret Sis­ters, City of Mag­ic, Loy­al­ty, Rag­weed and Pop­py, and the some­what auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor. Learn more at avi-writer.com, where you can read his week­ly blog, Word Craft. Fol­low Avi on Face­book, where he shares an inside look at his writ­ing process facebook.com/avi.writer and on Twit­ter @avi3writer.

Avi lives in Clark, Col­orado, with his wife.