Born: 1965 (circa), Panama
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the National Endowment for the Arts. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, she is best known for her critically acclaimed memoir, Mama’s Girl, which has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges throughout the country. The New Yorker called Mama’s Girl, “a troubling testament to grit and mother love…one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years.” Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, her work often reflects her Afro-Latina heritage.
In 2012, she cowrote Marcus Samuelsson’s best-selling memoir, Yes, Chef. She has also written more than a dozen books for children and teens, most recently the well received Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa and the body confidence Y/A novel, Plus.
A graduate of Simon’s Rock College at Bard, she has been the recipient of several awards including the Hodder fellowship for emerging novelists at Princeton University and two National Endowment for the Arts fiction awards. She speaks, reads and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She lives with her husband and daughter in Hoboken, New Jersey.