Lesa Cline-Ransome
Lesa Cline-Ransome (née Cline), is an American author of picture books and middle grade novels, best known for her NAACP Image Award-nominated picture book biography of Harriet Tubman, "Before She Was Harriet" and her middle grade novel "Finding Langston". Personal life. Cline-Ransome grew up in Malden, Massachusetts. Both her parents are nurses and she is the youngest of three siblings. She decided she wanted to become a writer during middle school and completed a summer workshop for teens with an interest in journalism at Suffolk University. She ultimately decided that journalism wasn't for  her and stopped wanting to become a writer until she received encouragement from her professors while studying at Pratt Institute. There, she worked for the college paper and took on a job in advertising. She didn't pick up her interest in writing until she married her husband, James E. Ransome, who encouraged her to write books for children while he was working on illustrating his own first novel. She researched for nearly a year after the birth of her first child before an editor at Simon & Schuster took a chance on what would later become her third published picture  book, "Satchel Paige". She lives with her husband and four children in Rhinebeck, New York. Works. Middle grade Picture books Awards. Nominated Won