Liza Ketchum

Liza Ketchum is the author of fifteen books for young people, including Newsgirl (Viking, 2009), nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award and a Boston Authors Club “Highly Recommended” book. Her novel in two voices, Where the Great Hawk Flies, won the 2006 Massachusetts Book Award for Children’s Literature and the Boston Authors Club/Julia Ward Howe Prize for Young Readers. Other titles focused on American history are the popular serialized adventure novel, Orphan Journey Home, and the non-fiction titles Into a New Country: Eight Remarkable Women of the West (an ALA “Best Book” for 2001), and The Gold Rush, a companion to the PBS series “The West.” Blue Coyote, the final title in her quartet of young adult novels, was nominated for a Lambda Literary award. Her books have appeared on the ALA’s “Best Book lists,” numerous state award lists, the Notable Social Studies Trade Book List, Bank Street College’s “Best Book List,” and on the NY Public Library’s “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing” and their “List for the Teenage.” 

Liza teaches at ASTAL’s Summer Institute in Writing for Young People at Rhode Island College. Prior to coming to Hamline, she taught writing at Vermont College, Emerson College, and at the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College.

Read more about Liza as an advisor