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Award-winning American writer Jewell Parker Rhodes talks to fellow writer Wendy Meddour about her Louisiana girls trilogy and about how she creates characters and stories that enthral the reader.

Rhodes writes for both adults and children. Her Louisiana girls trilogy of novels, Sugar, Ninth Ward and Bayou Magic, are all stories of young girls coming of age and finding the strength to overcome adversity. They are steeped in the folklore of the deep south of America and are hugely popular with young readers. Ninth Ward, set at the time of Hurricane Katrina, won a Parents’ Choice Foundation Award and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award. Sugar won the Jane Addam’s Children’s Book Award and has been cited as a “notable children’s book” by the American Library Association and as one of the “best children’s books of the year” by Kirkus Reviews.

Rhodes’ books for adults have won awards such as the American Book Award and the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence. She is Piper Endowed Chair of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.  Meddour is a writer and illustrator and author of the Wendy Quill children’s series.

Age 8-12

Programme of American literature and culture.

American programme.