Biography of R.J. Palacio

"I live in NYC with my husband, two sons, and two dogs. For many years, I was an art director and book jacket designer, designing covers for countless well-known and not so well-known writers in every genre of fiction and nonfiction. I always wanted to write, though. I kept waiting for the perfect time in my life to start writing, but after more than twenty years of designing book jackets for other people, I realized that the perfect time would never really present itself. It's never the perfect time to start writing a book. So I  decided to just go for it. Wonder is my first novel. And no, I didn't design the cover, but I sure do love it."

"Though Jaramillo has more than two decades of industry experience, she’s best known for her artistic chops. Her résumé includes stints in the art departments at Scribner and St. Martin’s Press prior to becoming creative director at Holt in 1990, where over the next 17 years, she designed covers for books by everyone from Sue Grafton to Salman Rushdie. While at Holt, she began photo-illustrating her own books for young people, and that interest in children’s literature led to her switch from design into editorial. She became director of children’s books at Workman in August 2006; a little more than a year later, she began work on what would become her first novel."

"Though Wonder was written under the name R.J. Palacio, it inevitably changed Raquel Jaramillo’s life, too. She stepped down from her position as director of children’s publishing at Workman last October, and, after a three-month hiatus, returned in February as editor-at-large. She’s in the office “a couple of days a week,” she said, and is about to launch a line of – sensing a theme here? – Star Wars Workbooks, a dozen titles covering reading, writing, and math at various grade levels (“That kept me busy last year,” she said)."

Palacio, a Star Wars fan, published a retelling of Star Wars: A New Hope in partnership with Disney-Lucasfilm in April 2015 as part of preparations for the December 2015 release of Episode VII of Star Wars. Jaramillo’s next project is a novel for a slightly older audience called That Was the River.

365 Days of Wonder {Mr. Browne's Book of Precepts}The Julian Chapter: A Wonder StoryPluto: A Wonder Story

Image source: http://rjpalacio.com/uploads/2/9/3/1/2931329/121753.jpg?269


Study Guides on Works by R.J. Palacio

Pony is a historical fiction novel written by R. J. Palacio that was published on 28 September 2021. The novel is set in the American frontier in 1860 and blends the historical elements with magical realism. In the same vein as True Grit and War...

Wonder, a story about a ten-year-old boy who lives in Manhattan and who has a rare physical deformity, was published in February of 2012 and was author R.J. Palacio's first novel.

Palacio was inspired to write Wonder after taking her son to buy...