Gwendolyn Wallace is an award-winning children’s literature author and PhD student at MIT in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, & Society (HASTS). Her work for both children and adults centers Afrodiasporic voices to explore the unfolding relationship between the spatial logics of colonialism and our bodyminds. She has had the honor of working on multimedia nonfiction projects with Ado Ato Pictures, Forensic Architecture, and the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. She is also a member of the TikTok Ethnography Collective. In 2021, Gwendolyn was chosen as the first fellow of the International African American Museum. Additionally, she is on the board of The REACH Fund of Connecticut (Reproductive Equity, Access & CHoice), a reproductive justice advocacy organization and Connecticut’s first abortion fund.
Gwendolyn’s writing for adults has been published in The Offing, Foglifter Journal, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, the Center for Research Architecture, and more. She is the author of picture books JOY TAKES ROOT and THE LIGHT SHE FEELS INSIDE (2023), as well as forthcoming books DANCING WITH WATER (2025) and IMAGINE NEW SUNS (2026). As an author, she believes in the radical imaginations of Black youth and writes books to help them step into their transformative power.
An alumna of Phillips Exeter Academy, Gwendolyn studied the history of science and medicine at Yale University before pursuing a master’s degree in public history at University College London. Pulling inspiration from the kaleidoscopic and genre-bending work of artists like Akwaeke Emezi, Theo Anthony, and Saidiya Hartman, Gwendolyn’s work explores the relationships between our bodies and environments in fresh and urgent ways. She can usually be found gardening, exploring used bookstores, or listening to the liberatory impulses of young children.
