Award-winning author Virginia Euwer Wolff was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1937. The daughter of a lawyer and teacher, she grew up in a hand-built log house without electricity but did not view this life as being excluded from civilization: She states, “We had a grand piano, a huge stone fireplace and a house full of books and paintings.” During her childhood, she also had opportunity to travel to New York to visit relatives. Out of the influence of these trips, she developed a greater passion for music and she began to learn the violin. After receiving her B.A. from Smith College in 1959, she taught elementary school and then high school English. In 1976, she started writing poetry and later tried her hand at novel writing for young adults. Published in 1988, Wolff's first book for young readers, Probably Still Nick Swansen, won both the International Reading Association Award and the PEN-West Book Award. She went on to write several more young adult novels, earning her additional honors, including the Golden Kite Award for Fiction and the Jane Addams Book Award for Children's Books that Build Peace. A mother of two and grandmother of two, Wolff continues to write and enjoy an enchanted life in her Oregon cottage. She is also a member of the Chamber Music Society of Oregon. Her pastimes include hiking, swimming, and gardening.
Note: Virginia Euwer Wolff is the contemporary young adult and children's author, and should not be confused with Virginia Woolf, the early 20th-century author.
Biographical Source: Something About the Author, vol. 137, pp. 211-15.
From the guide to the Viriginia Euwer Wolff Papers, 2009, (University of Minnesota. Children's Literature Research Collections. [clrc])
