Dashka Slater

Dashka Slater was born in 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to writer parents. Her mother, Dori Appel, is a psychologist and award-winning poet and playwright, and her father, Phillip Slater, was a world-renowned sociologist and professor at Harvard University. Growing up, Slater was an avid reader—her mother taught her to read at the age of four—and she began writing very early on, even publishing her stories in Cricket Magazine, a literary publication for children’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. After living most of her childhood in Massachusetts, Slater moved to the West Coast where she attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1986 with a B.S. in conservation and resource studies. After college, Slater worked a series of odd jobs but continued to write, and in 1990 she began work as a journalist. She continued working as a staff writer and editor until 1998, at which time she began a freelance career. Slater’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and Newsweek, and she is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the Meritorious Achievement Award for print journalism from Media Alliance in 1994. Slater’s writing has also been anthologized, including in the 1995/1996 Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, and she is the author of several children’s books and numerous fiction and nonfiction works for both adults and young adults. In 2000, Slater’s adult novel, The Wishing Box, was published to both popular and critical acclaim, becoming one of The Los Angeles Times’ best fiction books of that year. Slater was also the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004, and her children’s book, Escargot, won the Wanda Gag Read-Aloud Award in 2017. Her young adult true crime narrative, The 57 Bus, which began as an article for The New York Times Magazine, was the winner of the 2018 Stonewall Book Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. Slater lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Cliff Baker. The couple has a son named Milo.