Deborah Hopkinson is the award-winning author of more than 70 books for young readers including picture books, historical fiction, and nonfiction. Deborah’s nonfiction includes Titanic, Voices from the Disaster, which received a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction honor and a Robert F. Sibert Honor, Courage & Defiance, Stories of Spies, Saboteurs, and Survivors in WWII Denmark, winner of the OCTE Oregon Spirit Award, and Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924, which received an NCTE Orbis Pictus honor.
Deborah’s historical fiction title, The Great Trouble, A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel, also won an OCTE Oregon Spirit Award and was a finalist for the Oregon Book award. Her Golden Books include best-selling biographies of Betty White and Dolly Parton.
A native of Massachusetts, Deborah received a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For many years she worked in academic fundraising for institutions including Whitman College and Oregon State University. She lives with her family and many pets near Portland, Oregon and has two grown children and one grandson.