For the Press

Susan Campbell Bartoletti has published poetry, short stories, picture books, novels, and nonfiction. (One of her nonfiction books was a Jeopardy clue!)

Bartoletti has been called a “fearless researcher.” She uses primary sources such as images, photographs, oral histories, interviews, letters, and other archival materials to breathe the past to life. Her nonfiction subjects include child labor, the Great Irish Famine, Hitler Youth, the KKK, the woman who became known as Typhoid Mary, and woman suffrage. 

Her work has received dozens of awards and honors, including the Newbery Honor, the ALA Robert F. Sibert Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Honor for picture book writing, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction, the Pennsylvania Library Association Carolyn W. Field award, and the Washington Post/ Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work.

She has served on numerous award committees, including the National Book Award, and has spoken at schools, taught workshops, lectured at universities, and presented keynote addresses at conferences in 42 states and as far away as France, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Singapore.

Although she often writes about difficult subjects, she insists that she has a good sense of humor, no doubt a defense mechanism developed as a result of teaching eighth grade for eighteen years. She’s a graduate of Marywood University (BA), the University of Scranton (MA), and Binghamton University (PhD).

She and her husband live most of the time in northeastern Pennsylvania and some of the time in  Scotland. They have two grownup children and four grandchildren.