Spencer G. Shaw Endowed Lecture Series
Each year, the University of Washington Information School hosts a lecture established in Spencer Shaw's honor. This lecture takes place every October and features a leading figure in children's literature, who will speak to library students, teachers, librarians, alumni, community members, and more.
Famed authors and illustrators such as Tom Feelings, Maurice Sendak, Ashley Bryan, Margaret Mahy, Gary Soto, Laurence Yep, Theodore Taylor, Susan Cooper, Katherine Paterson, Milton Meltzer, Jerry Pinkney and Jason Reynolds have participated.
This lecture series is endowed to honor Spencer Shaw in perpetuity to continue to attract the best authors and illustrators in the field to lecture at the University of Washington.
2022 Lecturer
Joseph Bruchac
Joseph Bruchac is writer, musician and traditional storyteller. An enrolled member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation and a member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Elders Council, Bruchac is the author of over 170 books in many genres. His poems, essays and stories have appeared in hundreds of anthologies and magazines ranging from Akwesasne Notes and Parabola to the Paris Review, Cricket, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and National Geographic. His book Keepers of the Earth books (co-written with Michael Caduto), which uses traditional American Indian stories to teach science, has sold over a million copies. In 2021 his novel Code Talker was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best YA books of all time, and his novel in verse Rez Dogs was listed as one of the best books of 2021 by NPR. His newest book, A Peacemaker for Warring Nations, illustrated by Mohawk artist David Kanietakeron Fadden, tells the timely story of the founding of the Great League of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).
About Spencer G. Shaw (1916-2010)
Spencer Shaw picked his profession by the time he reached high school. Books and reading were important parts of his family life, and so was the Northwest Branch of the Hartford, Connecticut, Public Library.
“I was impressed with the work of the librarians and the services they rendered to the public,” he remembered. “Librarian Desier Moulton made it a welcomed place for the whole neighborhood. On Saturday mornings we gathered for the weekly story hours, where we were introduced to rich sources of folk literature from around the world. That’s what I admired.”
Shaw carried on that tradition during a nearly seven-decade career as a public librarian, educator and world-renowned expert on storytelling and library service to children. The American Library Association called him an “authentic and forthright spokesperson for children and youth librarians, contributing enormously in motivating and guiding the nation’s youth.”
Read more about Shaw in this 2005 profile.
Previous Spencer Shaw Lecturers
 Yuyi Morales |
 Brian Selznick |
 Jason Reynolds |
 Sharon Draper |
 Margarita Engle |
 M.T. Anderson |
 Kadir Nelson |
 Grace Lin |
 Jack Gantos |
 Christopher Paul Curtis |
 Pam Muños Ryan |
 Jane Yolen |
 Patricia C. McKissack |
 Gerald McDermott |
 Walter Dean Myers |
 Richard Peck |
 Spencer Shaw |
 Jerry Pinkney |
 Katherine Paterson |
 Gary Soto |
 Ashley Bryan |
 Tom Feelings |
 Theodore Taylor |
 Laurence Yep |
 Susan Cooper |
 Milton Meltzer |
 Maurice Sendak |
 Margaret Mahy |