Ann Angel, a writer, editor and the English graduate program director in writing at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, focuses her work on family and young adult sensibilities and issues. Her critically acclaimed young adult biography, Janis Joplin:Rise Up Singing, was awarded the 2011 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award by the American Library Association as well as the 2010 Council for Wisconsin Writers Kingery/Derluth Nonfiction Book Length Award, a 2011 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Crystal Kite Award, was named to Booklist’s Top 10 Biographies for Youth in 2011 and again to Booklist’s Top Ten Arts Books for 2011.
Her award winning anthology looking at the many ways teens define beauty, Such A Pretty Face, Short Stories about Beauty, received a top ranking with VOYA, the young adult librarians’ journal, was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults 2008 list by the American Library Association, and was listed as Recommended Reading by the 2008 issue of Horn Book Guide. Angel has also written 8 other books. These include a number of biographies and her novel, Real for Sure Sister, for middle grades about cross-cultural adoption. Her articles for regional and national publications include essays on birth, adoption, family life, and middle grade and teen literature. She also serves as a contributing writer forthepiratetree.com, a blog focusing on social justice issues in children’s literature.
Her most recent short story, “The Bracelet,” appeared in Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short-Short Stories (Persea Books), alongside short stories by Alice Walker, David Eggers and Naomi Sahib Nye among others.