Irene Hunt (1) (1907–2001)

Irene Hunt was born in Pontiac, Illinois to Franklin P. and Sarah Land Hunt. When she was a baby, the family moved to Newton, Illinois. In 1914, after her father died when Irene was only seven, she and her mother went to live on her grandparents' farm nearby. She had a lonely childhood but her grandfather told her stories about his own childhood during the Civil War that later influenced her writing. Irene earned degrees from the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota, and became a teacher of English and French in Illinois schools from 1930 to 1945. She taught psychology at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, for four years. She then returned to Illinois in 1950 to become a director of language arts in elementary and junior high school.

Irene was 57 years old in 1964 when her debut novel Across Five Aprils was published after she had received many rejection slips. Across Five Aprils, set in southern Illinois during the Civil War, received great acclaim -- it was chosen as a Newbery Honor Book and won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and the Charles W. Follett Award. Her next novel, Up a Road Slowly (1966), received the 1967 Newbery Medal, among other honors. Irene retired in 1969 to devoted her time to writing, and published several more distinguished books for young readers and adults. Her work The Everlasting Hills received the Parents' Choice Award in 1985.