Gloria Whelan
American children's writer
Gloria Whelan (born November 23, 1923) is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist known primarily for children's and young adult fiction. She won the annual National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2000 for the novel Homeless Bird. She also won the 2013 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction for her short story What World Is This? and the work became the title for the independent publisher's 2013 collection of short stories.
Whelan's books include many historical fiction novels, including a trilogy set on Mackinac Island and a quartet series set in communist Russia. Whelan is also the author of short stories which have appeared in The Ontario Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, and other literary quarterlies. Her collection of short stories, Playing with Shadows, was published by the Illinois Press. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies and in Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards. Whelan is, according to Liz Rosenberg of the Chicago Tribune, "an accomplished, graceful, and intelligent writer."
Early life and education
Gloria was the daughter of William Rewoldt and Hildegarde Kilwinski Rewoldt, born 1923 in Detroit. She read many books as a girl, sometimes dictated stories that her baby sitter transcribed, and wrote poetry.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american children's writer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5571483. VIAF identifies the subject as 59310017. The Library of Congress control number is n78007680. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2000 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gloria Whelan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.