Fred McKissack

 Fredrick L. McKissack Jr. has nearly 20 years experience as a writer and editor, most recently serving as an award-winning editorial writer for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette. His latest novel, Shooting Star, published in August by Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, is about high school football and performance enhancing drugs. It has received starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal, as well as an enthusiastic review from Booklist.  "This is much more than a cautionary tale about steroid use in high-school students," the reviewer from Kirkus wrote. "The dialogue is smart; Jomo's relationships with his peers, his girlfriend and his college-professor father ring true.  A strong narrative and layered characterizations elevate this timely story."

In addition to his journalistic work, Fred has written and contributed to books for young people. In 1995, he was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book awardee as co-author of Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues (Scholastic, 1994). He is also the author of Black Hoops (Scholastic, 1999), and contributed to Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life (Amistad, 2002). Recently he worked with his wife on a series of books on counting through biomes and the holidays for Enslow. Fred is co-author of a graphic novel "The Adventures of Deadwood Dick," based on the life of the celebrated black cowboy (and Davidson County native) Nat Love, for San Francisco-based Chronicle Books, and due to be released in 2011.