Crescent Dragonwagon

Crescent Dragonwagon (nee Ellen Zolotow, November 25, 1952, New York City) is a writer in six different genres, and a workshop leader. She has written fifty traditionally published books, including two novels, seven cookbooks / culinary memoirs, more than twenty children's books, a biography, and a collection of poetry. In addition, she has written for magazines ranging from New York Times Book Review to Lear's, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, and Horn Book.

Dragonwagon and her late husband, Ned Shank, owned Dairy Hollow House, a country inn and restaurant in the Ozark Mountain community of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Dragonwagon later co-founded the non-profit Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow, and was active in the cultural and literary life of Arkansas throughout the 31 years she lived in the state full-time. After Shank's death in 2000, Dragonwagon moved to her family's summer home in Vermont.

Since the 2014 death of her subsequent partner, filmmaker-activist David R. Koff, with whom she lived in Vermont for a decade, she has divided her time between New York, Vermont, and Arkansas.

Dragonwagon is the daughter of the writers Charlotte Zolotow and the late Hollywood biographer Maurice Zolotow.[1] She serves as literary executor to both her parents.

In 1977 she published a short and very engaging biography of Stevie Wonder. The book is under 100 pages and contains as much black-and-white photography of Stevie Wonder as it does text. Dragonwagon wrote the biography in the first-person, and briefly recounts her first meeting with "Steve" in 1974 (on page 81 of the book) in two sentences: "Hi, I'm Crescent, we spoke on the phone." "Crescent, hello, the writer..." (Stevie replies.)

Awards

Dragonwagon's tenth children's book, Half a Moon and One Whole Star, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney and published in 1986, was the winner of a Coretta Scott King Book Award, as well as a Reading Rainbow Selection.

In 1993, Dragonwagon won the Name of the Year award.[2] In 2010, the Dragonwagon Regional was named after her.[3]

Books

Biography

Cookbooks

Children's books

Novels

See also

References

  1. ↑ Fox, Margalit (2013-11-19). "Charlotte Zolotow, Author of Books on Children’s Real Issues, Dies at 98". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-11-23.
  2. ↑ "Names of the Year," NOTY High Committee, February 28, 2007.
  3. ↑ "2010 NOTY: Dragonwagon Regional, Part 1," NOTY High Committee, April 5, 2010.

External links