In 1994, Walter Dean Myers received the MAE Award. The committee cited his novels: Hoops, Fallen Angels, Scorpions, and Motown and Didi.

Myers was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When he was three, his mother died, and he went to live in Harlem, New York with the Deans. In those years, Myers says that Harlem “was a place of affirmation. The excitement of city living exploded in the teeming streets.”

He was a good student, but he wasn’t able to go to college. So, at seventeen, he joined the army—always reading and always writing stories. Eventually, he went to college, found a job in publishing, and began to write books for young adults. “The sense of isolation I felt as a young person is now relieved by the connecting links of my stories.”