As an inaugural fellow with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC), she also developed foundational curricular frameworks for youth and adult anti-racist programming and this work continues to influence her writing. A former English teacher, she educated children and teens in traditional and alternative learning settings for more than 15 years. Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, M.S.Ed, is a Philadelphia-based, award-winning children’s book author. I wrote my own picture books and discovered that this was my writing passion. I spent a lot of time in my local library studying kidlit, taking notes, and recreating my own versions of the great writing that I read. I started seeing those picture books I adored as mentor texts. I had to grab a notebook and jot them all down.Īfter that, writing for kids became an obsession. And then, I was suddenly flooded with ideas. I had characters and bits and parts of stories all fighting for attention in my head. In that moment, a voice in my head said, you have those stories. You know the smile people make when they’re quietly thinking someone is crazy? That kind. It was a weird, revelatory, moment – the kind of moment that when I have described it to others has gotten me uncomfortable smiles in response. I’m not sure why hearing it this time was different from any other time. Although I was reading lots of children’s books with my two sons and I adored those books, writing for kids didn’t occur to me.Īnd then one day, l overheard a conversation in a Muslim women’s group, a conversation that I had literally had many times before about the lack of children’s books representing Black Muslim kids, and something clicked. I tried writing articles and other stuff, but none of it was satisfying my craving. In 2015, my longing to write more seriously started to gnaw at me. Occasionally, I’d publish an article or write poetry for myself, and I felt fulfilled just doing that. I loved talking about writing though and I loved sharing books with young people, so I became an English teacher. It seemed like too grand a thing to want. What if I couldn’t pay bills as a writer and wasted the college education my family had sometimes gone hungry to afford? More than that, I was too embarrassed to openly claim my dream. I come from a working-class background and the idea of writing for a living felt impractical. I wrote stories and poetry all through grade school and even college, but as an adult, I suppressed my dreams of pursuing professional writing. I added a sequel and then another and another until I had an impossibly long series.
I knew I wanted to be a writer since the age of seven when I wrote a story called “Little Ballerina” and wasn’t satisfied when I finished writing it. (Excerpted from my feature on The Brown Bookshelf: 28 Days Later)
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