Bradley Steffens


Bradley Steffens is an American poet, playwright, novelist, and author of more than fifty nonfiction books for children and young adults.

Early professional work

In the mid-1970s Steffens self-published two chapbooks of his poetry, which he sold on the streets of Southern
California. In 1976, the City of Laguna Beach, California, denied Steffens a permit to sell his works within the
city limits, touching off brouhaha in the local press. Steffens went to court, seeking relief under the First Amendment, but the court ruled in favor of the city. Steffens turned to writing a series of one-act plays-in-verse,
which were professionally produced as “Herod the Great: A Sequence of Pageants” by the Olympia Arts Ensemble
in Minneapolis in 1981 with Michael Yonkers in the title role. Noel Bredahl of the St. Paul Post-Dispatch hailed
the play as "an awesome creation on the part of the playwright. David Hawley, also of the St. Paul Post Dispatch, wrote, “Steffens is a powerful, talented artist."

Writing career

Steffens has published more than fifty poems over the last forty years, receiving many awards along the way,
including the Emerging Voices Award presented by The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and the Lake Superior
Writing Competition Award sponsored by the Duluth Public Library. While working as a freelance proofreader
for Lucent Books in 1989, Steffens wrote his first nonfiction book for children, Animal Rights. Over the next twenty-seven years, he wrote twenty-five more books for children and young adults, coauthored seven, and edited the 2004 anthology The Free Speech Movement. His works have been praised by Booklist, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Children’s Literature. The Fountain called his Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist a “beautiful work about Ibn al-Haytham and his advancement of experimental science.”
Steffens is a two-time recipient of the San Diego Book Award for Best Young Adult & Children's Nonfiction. His Giants won the 2005 award and his J.K. Rowling received the 2007 prize. J.K. Rowling also earned Steffens the Theodor S. Geisel Award for the best published book by a San Diego County author in 2007. His Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist was excerpted in Discovery Channel Magazine in March 2010. He was the keynote speaker at the Southeast Regional Conference of The Islamic Medical Association of North America, the Sixth Annual Meeting
of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, the Pacifica Institute, and Women in Dialogue.

Selected works

Author

Free Speech Movement. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004.