Jason Reynolds

Biography

Jason Reynolds (born 1983) grew up in Washington, D.C., in the Oxon Hill neighborhood of Maryland — a working-class, predominantly Black community. He did not read a novel for pleasure until he was seventeen, when he discovered the poetry of Queen Latifah and later the fiction of Walter Dean Myers. That late entry into reading shaped everything about his career: he writes explicitly for the kids he was, the kids who see books as homework rather than pleasure. He became the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature in 2020, and his central mission — making literature feel like a conversation rather than an obligation — is embedded in every stylistic choice Ghost makes.

Jason Reynolds at a glance