Dhonielle Clayton

Dhonielle Clayton is an American author and chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books. Her works include "The Belles" and "Tiny Pretty Things", co-authored with Sona Charaipotra.
Life and career.
Clayton was born in Washington, D.C. She graduated with a B.A. from Wake Forest University in 2005, a M.A. from Hollins University in 2008, and a M.F.A. in creative writing from The New School in 2012.
She co-founded the boutique book packager CAKE Literary with Sona Charaipotra, with whom she co-authored the "Tiny Pretty Things" series. The series debuted in 2015 and follows three teenage dance students at New York's American Ballet Company. "Kirkus" referred to volume one as "a page-turner with heart." "Tiny Pretty Things" is set to debut in 2020 as a series on Netflix.
Her interest as a teenager in magazines, beauty and how they affected how she viewed herself later served as inspirations for her debut novel, "The Belle"s, released in February 2018. The fantasy young adult novel centers a 16-year-old girl and her sisters, tasked with restoring beauty to a colorless grey world. The book was a "New York Times" bestseller and was named a Best Book of 2018 by "Kirkus".
Clayton is Chief Operating Officer of We Need Diverse Books, which seeks to increase representations of marginalized groups in children and young adult literature. She also works as a sensitivity reader for children's literature and works to identify stereotypes or inauthentic portrayals of Black characters. She has also advocated for books to better represent people of color.
In 2019, Clayton attracted criticism for negative Tweets about a student of Northern State University, who had advocated for the inclusion of three books by persons of colour, including Bryan Stevenson's memoir "Just Mercy" about racial injustice, instead of a YA novel by Sarah Dessen, in the university's 'Common Reads' program. Clayton later deleted the tweets.
Awards.
Clayton's "The Belles" was a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.
Published works.
Authored: 
Edited: