Bio

Joanne Hyppolite was born in Haiti and grew up in Boston, MA. She is the African Diaspora curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. Prior to joining the Smithsonian in 2014, she was the Chief Curator at HistoryMiami Museum for eight years. Joanne has published two popular middle-grade novels for children with Penguin Random House: Seth and Samona which won the Marguerite DeAngeli prize for New Children’s Fiction and Ola Shakes It Up. Her adult fiction has published In the Caribbean Writer and The Butterfly’s Way: Voice from the Haitian Dyaspora. She holds Ph.D. in literature from the University of Miami, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and B.A. in African American Studies and Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania. Joanne lives in Maryland and Florida. She is Mom to amazing teenager and multidisciplinary artist Charles “Carl” Green, who wanted more real estate in her bios.