For Stephanie Hemphill, gaining selection as a Printz Honor Book winner is thrilling because it may bring readers, who might not otherwise have discovered Sylvia Plath, to the poet's work.

Hemphill's "Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath" is one of four Printz Honor Books that complement Printz Award winner Geraldine McCaughrean's "The White Darkness" in the 2008 selection by a nine-person committee of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).

YALSA isa division of the American Library Association.

Shortly after her selection in January,Hemphill expressed gratitude to the nation's librarians who have been so supportive of her work.

"One of the main purposes of this book is to encourage more people to read Sylvia Plath," said Hemphill. "Receiving a Printz honor is my greatest dream for Your Own, Sylvia, because if people know Sylvia's biography, the hope is that it may encourage them to read her poetry and prose."

"Although knowledge of an author's biography is not always essential to understand his or her work, I think it aids in understanding Plath's. I have always believed that Sylvia Plath should be read in classrooms alongside Emily Dickinson as one of our great female American poets. But perhaps because her work is at times less accessible, that is not always the case. This book aims to help bridge that gap."

Of librarians, Hemphill added, "They have given this book its life, through their kind reviews and more importantly by bringing it to teen readers. The year 2007 marked Sylvia Plath's 75th birthday. My great joy is to be able to celebrate with readers of Plath, both old and new."

Hemphill's selection was announced at the American Library Association's Mid-Winter Meeting in Philadelphia. All of the other Printz Honor Book authors are women, marking the second time that has occurred in the nine-year history of the Printz Award.

Hemphill is a graduate of Naperville Central High School in Illinois and the University of Illinois at Champaign, where she received degrees in English Literature and Rhetoric (Creative Writing).

During its yearlong journey to select the four Honor Books and one Printz Award, the nine Printz Committee members read hundreds of books published for teens.

"The committee committed themselves to reading the entire field of young adult books and then read our nominated titles over and over and subjected them to minute comparison," said Lynn Rutan, committee chairman.

After a year of intensive reading, discussion and re-reading, the committee met for three days in Philadelphia to select this year's winner. An arduous consensus-building process brought the committee to this year's winners, many of which had been below the radar.

Rutan said the committee's job has become more demanding over the years, as the committee members have wide-ranging forms of story-telling to consider, such as graphic novels, wordless books and books that blend genre in increasingly innovative ways.

Rutan praised Hemphill's work as "quite innovative in its approach."

"The reader has many options to read," Rutan said. "You can sink yourself down into the gorgeous poetry-truly the best poetry of the year-or because it is so beautifully documented, the reader who wants to immerse him or herself into Sylvia Plath has all the references at the end."

"Hemphill's book is a wonderful introduction to the life and work of Sylvia Plath and contains some of the best original poetry of the year."

The annual award for excellence is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest growing division of ALA, and is sponsored by Booklist. The award, first given in 2000, is named for the late Michael L. Printz, a Topeka, Kan., school librarian known for discovering and promoting quality books for young adults.

Hemphill's publisher is Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books.

For more information about the Michael L. Printz Award, go to www.ala.org/yalsa/printz.

More About Stephanie Hemphill

Stephanie Hemphill's first novel in poems, Things Left Unsaid, was published by Hyperion in 2005 and was awarded the 2006 Myra Cohn Livingston Award for Excellence in Poetry by the Children's Literature Council of Southern California.

Her second novel, a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath, Your Own, Sylvia was published by Knopf in March 2007. A third novel in verse for teens, Wicked Girls, a verse story of the Salem witch trials, will come out from Hyperion in the spring of 2009.

Stephanie received an SCBWI Magazine Merit Award in Poetry and chaired the PEN Award's Children's Literature Committee. She has been writing, studying and presenting poetry for adults and children for many years at UCLA, the University of Illinois (where she received an award from The Academy of American Poets), with Writers at Work and at conferences across the country. Stephanie lives in Los Angeles.