Lauren Wolk

Since graduating from Brown University in 1981, Lauren has worked as a writer for the Battered Women’s Project at the St. Paul American Indian Center, a senior editor with a Toronto publisher, a high school English and Creative Writing teacher, Assistant Director at the Cape Cod Writers Center, and, from 2007-2021, Associate Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.

In 1999, Random House published her first novel, Those Who Favor Fire. In 2016, Dutton published her New York Times bestselling novel Wolf Hollow, which won a 2017 Newbery Honor, the 2016 New England Book Award, a 2017 Jane Addams Honor, the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award, and other honors. In 2017, Dutton published Beyond the Bright Sea, which won the 2018 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and was short-listed for the New England Book Award and the Carnegie Award (U.K.). Echo Mountain (2020) was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal. Dutton published My Own Lightning, a sequel to Wolf Hollow, in 2022, and Candle Island in 2025. Collectively, her books have won over 50 state book awards. Wolk is also the Massachusetts Reading Association’s 2024 Children’s Literature Award winner.

Wolk is the author of three new picture books, currently in production. The first of these, The Outermost Mouse, will be released in May 2026. Her next novel will be released in 2027, and she is hard at work on a collection of non-fiction poetry for young adults. She is also a magazine feature writer, an arts advocate, exhibition curator, and an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.

Wolk has also worked as a volunteer to help bridge the gap between arts and the environment by founding the Words in the Wild program at Barnstable Land Trust and helping to rehabilitate the John Hay Studio at Brewster Conservation Trust so local authors could spend quiet time in isolation while working on literary projects.

Wolk has also taught creative writing to students of all ages. She is a frequent presenter at schools, libraries, conferences, and literary festivals.

As a visual artist, Wolk is represented by the Larkin Gallery (Provincetown and Harwich Port, Massachusetts) and has exhibited her work at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit Center for the Arts, Miller White Gallery, and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod

Most recently, Wolk has become involved in filmmaking. As co-founder of The InkLine Project, she spent 2025 working with creative partner Jackie Reeves, an artist/animator who invited her to provide words to accompany brief, extemporaneous animations. Together, Wolk and Reeves have created over thirty InkLines, compiling them into anthologies that have been accepted into the Provincetown International Film Festival, won an award at The Williamsburg International Film and Music Competition, named Best Animated Short by the New York Independent Women Film Festival. InkLine anthologies have also been screened at Cotuit Center for the Arts and Cape Cinema. Reeves and Wolk hope to screen their work in other festivals and at other arts venues and schools both on and off Cape in 2026.

For her work as a writer, artist, and filmmaker, Wolk was named 2026 Artist of the Year (along with Jackie Reeves) by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.

To contact Wolk, visit her website: www. laurenwolk.com