bio

Derrick Barnes is a National Book Award Finalist for his 2022 graphic novel Victory. Stand!-Raising My Fist For Justice, which also won the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award, and a Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers.

In 2020, he became the only author to win the Kirkus Prize twice for his twelfth release, the New York Times bestseller, I Am Every Good Thing. The title also won a Charlotte Huck Award (NCTE), and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor.

Derrick is also the creator of the New York Times Bestselling companion picture books, The King of Kindergarten (2019) and the Queen of Kindergarten (2022). His 2023 picturebook release, LIKE LAVA IN MY VEINS was an instant USA Today bestseller, and was nominated for a 2024 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.

In 2025 the middle grade novel THE INCREDIBLY HUMAN HENSON BLAYZE won a 2026 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the 2026 Walter Dean Myers Award forYoungReaders, a 2026 Jane Addams Honor book, a 2025 Kirkus Prize finalist, and was on the 2025 National Book Award Longlist for Young Readers.

He is a graduate of Jackson State University (BA-Marketing ’99) and was the first African-American male creative copywriter hired by Hallmark Cards. Derrick is a native of Kansas City, MO, but currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his enchanting wife, Dr. Tinka Barnes. They are the parents of four sons, the Mighty Barnes Brothers.