In this clip from their conversation, 2020 Margaret A. Edwards Award winner Kekla Magoon talks to Ibi Zoboi (American Street) about her childhood, her experience getting her MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and diversity in children’s literature.

“For me,” she says, “the writing has been a way to deepen my own understanding of my connection to Blackness, and my connection to Black Americanness. And that work has mostly been done post-MFA because I got to know more Black writers, I got deeper into my stories, the world changed around me. I studied history in new and different ways.”

[Read: Writing for Change: Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner Kekla Magoon in Conversation with Ibi Zoboi]