Connie Rose Porter is an African-American writer best known for children's and young-adult books. She was the third youngest of nine children of a family living in a housing project. She went on to earn degrees from SUNY Albany and Louisiana State University. She has since taught English and creative writing at Milton Academy, Emerson College, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She was a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and was a regional winner in Granta's Best Young American Novelist contest. Porter's debut novel All-Bright Court portrayed life in a northern urban "slum" community during the late 20th century. She then began work on a series of children's books about a pre-teenage girl named Addy Walker, who escaped from slavery in North Carolina during the American Civil War and learned the life of freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pleasant Company Publications published eleven of her "Addy" books between 1993 and 2003 as part of its American Girls Collection Series and in conjunction with the Addy Walker doll, which was the first non-white doll of its American Girl Collection. 

July 29th, 1959 in (Age 65)