Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid and Class Act. In 2020, New Kid became the only graphic novel in history to win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature, and it won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer. Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City.