This Goodly Land

Deborah Wiles (1953–present)

Other Names Used

• Deborah Edwards: birth name

Alabama Connections

• Mobile, Mobile County: birthplace, early childhood residence

Selected Works

• Wiles, Deborah. Freedom Summer. Illus. Jerome Lagarrigue. New York: Athenueum Books for Young Readers, 2001. For younger readers.
• Wiles, Deborah. Love, Ruby Lavender. San Diego: Harcourt, 2001. For younger readers.
• Wiles, Deborah. One Wide Sky: A Bedtime Lullaby. Illus. Tim Bowers. San Diego: Harcourt, 2003. For younger readers.
• Wiles, Deborah. Each Little Bird That Sings. Orlando, Fla.: Gulliver Books/Harcourt, 2005. For younger readers.
• Wiles, Deborah. The Aurora County All-Stars. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2007. For younger readers.

Literary Awards

• Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 2001, for Love, Ruby Lavender
• Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, New York Public Library and Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, 2002, for Freedom Summer
• Josette Frank Award, Children's Book Committee of Bank Street College of Education and the Florence L. Miller Memorial Fund, 2006, for Each Little Bird That Sings
• E. B. White Read Aloud Award, Association of Booksellers for Children, 2006, for Each Little Bird That Sings
• Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 2008, for Each Little Bird That Sings

Biographical Information

Deborah Wiles was born in Mobile, Ala., where her father, a US Air Force pilot, was stationed. The family moved frequently as her father was transferred from base to base. They moved to Hawaii when she was five, Camp Springs, Md., when she was eight, Charleston, S.C., when she was fifteen, and the Philippines just before her senior year in high school. Wiles spent summers with relatives in Louin, Miss., however, and thought of Mississippi as her home. After graduating from high school, she returned there to attend Jones County Junior College. She left college after her first semester to get married and start a family. Wiles was inspired to become a writer while reading books to her children. She taught herself to write in the 1970s and began selling her work on a freelance basis in the 1980s. She also worked many other jobs to support her family.

In 2001, Wiles published her first two books: a picture book Freedom Summer and a young adult novel Love, Ruby Lavender. That year, she held the first Thurber House Residency in Children's Literature in Columbus, Ohio. Wiles also entered the writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In 2003, she graduated from the program, earning an MFA, and published her second picture book. The following year, Wiles was awarded the PEN/Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. Later that year, she moved from Frederick, Md., where she had lived since she was twenty-five, to Atlanta, Ga. In 2005, Wiles published a second novel (Each Little Bird That Sings) and wrote and published a serialized novel, Moves the Symphony True, in The Boston Globe. The serialized novel was republished in book form as The Aurora County All-Stars in 2007.

Interests and Themes

Deborah Wiles writes picture books and young adult novels. Her novels are set in small-town Mississippi and concern growing up and learning to deal with loss.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Book Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries

• "Wiles, Deborah"; Something About the Author. Vol. 171. Detroit: Thomson-Gale, . 189-191.

Reference Web Sites

• Deborah Wiles. 2007. http://www.deborahwiles.com/.
• Wiles, Deborah. One Pomegranate. 2009. http://deborahwiles1.blogspot.com/.

Location of Papers

• University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg

Photo courtesy of Deborah Wiles.

Last updated on Oct 10, 2009.