Kadir Nelson is an award-winning American author and artist. His bestselling picture books include WE ARE THE SHIP: The Story of Negro League Baseball, Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, and Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, which was a Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award recipient, and a Newberry Honor Book.
read moreHe has also received multiple awards from the Society of Illustrators in New York, including the prestigious Hamilton King Award, as well as multiple Caldecott Honors, Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, New York Times Best Illustrated Book Awards, several NAACP Image Awards, and an Olympic Art Bronze medal, among others. His paintings are in the permanent collections of several notable institutions including the United States House of Representatives, the Muskegon Museum of Art, The National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the World Trade Center, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Nelson received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and he currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
Photo credit (headshot): George DeLoache.