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Jacqueline Sweeney is a writer, teacher, musician, mom, and grandmom with a B.A. and M.A. in English Lit. from Rutgers and Purdue and a music minor from East Carolina. She likes nothing better than to go into classrooms and teach children to write their own poems and prose (which she has done in four states with Poets-in-the-Schools since 1974 and as an author-in-residence in upstate NY since 1988). Jacqueline's poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Sparrow, Negative Capability, etc., but for the last 17 years she's written almost exclusively for children, with poems and stories appearing in many anthologies and magazines (Cricket, Spider, etc.). She has published many books, including a sixteen-book We Can Read! series of *real literature* stories for beginning readers, eight professional books for teachers to help implement creative ways to teach writing (grades 2-8), and a five-book series of children's art and poetry.
Jackie began as a special ed. teacher with a contained classroom of court committed boys (ages 12-20) where she created and implemented a successful poetry-as-therapy program and has taught in many settings from kindergarten to college ever since. Her college teaching credentials include Purdue University, Columbia State Community College (Columbia, Tenn.), and a long stint at Ulster Community College (Stone Ridge, NY), where she taught courses in English composition, ESL, Introduction to Poetry, and Creative Writing.
She sails any classroom with a joyous ease that is so contagious even the most reluctant writers spin their idea wheels with skill and excitement and confidence in their newly unearthed abilities.
Jacqueline lives in upstate New York in the Catskill mountains.