"I don't remember when I actually realized how very special was this private playground/haven/sanctuary of mine.... Everything was possible while I sat and imagined on my fire escape," reflects Sharon Bell Mathis in her Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS) entry. On that fire escape of a Brooklyn apartment, Mathis found a place where her imagination reigned as she wrote her first stories and poems. In her fiction for children and young people, Mathis today plants hope, strength, and possibility into her uncompromising portrayals of urban life and the difficulties encountered by her African-American protagonists.

Mathis was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She was the first of four children--three girls and a boy--born to Alice Frazier and John Willie Bell. Her brother John--known as "Bubba"--is a retired New York City detective, who is now a county deputy sheriff in Maryland; she has two...