Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo (born 25 March 1964) is an American children's author, born in Philadelphia, who has won the Newbery Medal twice, for The Tale of Despereaux (2003) and Flora & Ulysses (2013).

Born Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo, she grew up in Clermont, Florida, and graduated in English from the University of Florida in 1987. In 1994 she moved to Minneapolis, where she still lives, and worked in a book warehouse while trying to get published. Her first accepted book, Because of Winn-Dixie (Candlewick Press, 2000), won a Newbery Honor. It was followed by The Tiger Rising (2001), The Tale of Despereaux (Candlewick, 2003), illustrated by Timothy B. Ering, which won the 2004 Newbery Medal, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006), The Magician's Elephant (2009) and the Mercy Watson early-reader series (2005 to 2022). Flora & Ulysses won her second Newbery Medal in 2014. She served as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature in 2014 and 2015. She has written more than 25 books, which have sold about 37 million copies, and several have been filmed, including Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), The Tale of Despereaux (2008) and Flora & Ulysses (2021).

For collectors

The key books are the Candlewick Press first editions of her debut, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000), a Newbery Honor book, and of The Tale of Despereaux (2003), her first Newbery Medal winner, together with the first edition of Flora & Ulysses (2013), her second.