Tracey Baptiste

Tracey Baptiste lived in Trinidad until she was fifteen, and she grew up on jumbie stories and fairy tales. Those stories inspired her to write the middle grade fantasy adventures The Jumbies and Rise of the Jumbies. She is also the author of the contemporary YA novel Angel’s Grace as well as nonfiction books for kids in elementary through high school.

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Biography

Tracey Baptiste was born in Trinidad, where she grew up on jumbie stories and fairy tales, and decided to be a writer at the wise old age of three, after her mother bought her an oversized illustrated Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “It was so spellbindingly beautiful, I thought I wanted to live in its pages my entire life.”

Her debut, a young adult novel titled Angel’s Grace, was named one of the 100 best books for reading and sharing by New York City librarians.

Before she started writing professionally, Tracey was a second grade teacher. After that, she worked in educational publishing developing reading and language arts textbooks for kids, and later edited nonfiction books for kids.

Tracey is a wife and mom and lives in New Jersey, where she writes and edits books for kids from a very cozy office in her house that is filled with more toys than she can count. She does lots of author visits, and is on the faculty at Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program.