Amy Timberlake

Amy Timberlake grew up in Hudson, Wisconsin, a town situated on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border with glorious views of the St. Croix River. She is the author of The Dirty Cowboy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) which won SCBWI’s Golden Kite Award, a Parents Choice Gold Medal, an International Reading Association 2004 Notable Book Citation, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, First Prize in the 2004 Marion Vannett Ridgway Awards, Finalist for the Spur Award (Western Writers of America) and was a finalist for Southeast Booksellers Association 2004 Book Award.

Amy has taught writing at the Hand Workshop Art Center in Richmond, Virginia, and has an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received a residency fellowship at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in June 2002 and won a Judy Delton Scholarship in June 2001. She has worked as a book reviewer and columnist, a children’s bookseller, a book event coordinator, and as the Public Information Officer at the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Her next book, a middle grade novel entitled That Girl Lucy Moon, will be published by Hyperion Books for Children in September 2006.

She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

That Girl Lucy Moon
Hyperion, 2006
ages 9 to 12, ISBN 978-0-7868-5298-7

"Lucy Moon is the kind of girl who loudly supports animal rights—during hunting season. She wears a woven cap made of hemp in support of third world workers. Lucy Moon is the kind of girl who spots injustice and isn't afraid to fight it. So when classmates land a trip to the police station for sledding on Wiggins Hill and local paper refuses to report it—or the role Miss Ilene Viola Wiggins, the richest woman in town, plays in the arrest—Lucy launches a campaign to fight against corruption in her hometown—and for sledding rights on Wiggins Hill.

But Miss Wiggins' influence in town is wide and powerful. Soon, Lucy becomes a scapegoat and is labeled a "bad influence" by teachers and neighbors. And with her mother off on a photography trip, her father withdrawn, and her friends baffled by her passion for this fight, Lucy herself begins to wonder: what is the point of fighting injustice? And can one person really make a difference?"

The Dirty Cowboy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003
ages 4 to 8, ISBN 978-0-374-31791-1

After he finds a tumbleweed in his chaps and the numerous bugs buzzing around him affect his hearing, the cowboy decides it's time to head to the river. Once there, he peels off all his clothes and tells his trusty old dog to guard them against strangers. He takes a refreshing bath and emerges clean as corn—but so fresh-smelling that his dog doesn't recognize him! Negotiations over the return of the clothes prove fruitless. A wrestling match ensues in a tale that grows taller by the sentence, climaxing in a fabric-speckled dust devil.