Judy Blume

Judy Blume (born February 12, 1938, Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American author known for creating juvenile fiction that features people and situations identifiable to young readers. A literary giant in the genres of young adult (YA) and children’s literature, Blume attracted a devoted readership with such novels as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Deenie, Forever, and Superfudge. She has also published books for the adult fiction market. While her frankness, first-person narratives, and ability to portray the concerns of her audience with humor made her a remarkably popular and award-winning author, her works have often been banned because of objections to their subject matter and language.

Early life and first publications

After graduating from high school with high honors, Judy Sussman attended New York University and received a bachelor’s degree in education in 1960. In 1959 she married John Blume, with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in the 1970s. In an interview with National Public Radio in 2023, Blume said, “He was a good and loyal person. But it seemed that he was from another era, and he wasn’t stepping up to the plate to the new era of the ’60s, and he didn’t want me to either. He wanted me the way I was when we met and married.” (Blume married two more times: a brief union with physicist Thomas Kitchens in the 1970s that ended in divorce, followed by her marriage to writer George Cooper in 1987.)

While enrolled in a continuing education course on writing for children and teenagers, Blume produced a draft of what became her first published book, The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo (1969). About the same time, she published a version of Iggie’s House in Trailblazer magazine; she rewrote it for publication in book form in 1970.

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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

In 1970 Blume made a huge splash in the world of YA literature with the publication of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a preteen novel told from the perspective of Margaret Simon, an 11-year-old girl whose family has moved to a new town. Margaret, who has a Christian mother and a Jewish father, struggles to understand her developing body and her relationship with religion. She speaks directly to God about the uncertainties that come with adolescence—her first period, bra size, boys, and where she fits in among her new classmates, in her family’s religious communities, and with God.

Critics praised Blume’s willingness to tackle puberty and other sensitive subject matter in an honest and understandable way. In a 2014 interview with Lena Dunham published in The Believer, Blume said of the book’s critical response, “I didn’t know I was really a writer until I read a review of Margaret in The New York Times. Then I thought, Oh my God, maybe I can really do this.” Many young readers wrote letters to tell Blume that they identified with Margaret and her dilemmas. Some adults, however, deemed the book inappropriate and wanted it removed from library shelves, citing its frank treatment of menstruation and physical development and claiming that it denigrated religion.

Forever and other YA and children’s books

Blume solidified her standing as a leading author of books for young adults with such novels as Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971), It’s Not the End of the World (1972), Deenie (1973), Tiger Eyes (1981, film 2012), Just as Long as We’re Together (1987), and Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson (1993). In Forever (1975), a story about unmarried teenagers Katherine and Michael experiencing love and sex for the first time, Blume addressed the topic of sex in a way that spoke to readers of the importance of responsibility—Katherine visits a clinic and is given a prescription for birth control pills—while remaining honest, relatable, and nonjudgmental. The book’s treatment of teen sex, birth control, and disobedience to parents have made it a prime target of book-banning campaigns.

Blume wrote numerous books for middle-school readers, including Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (1972), Blubber (1974), Superfudge (1980), Fudge-a-Mania (1990), and Double Fudge (2002). Between 2007 and 2009 she continued the story of The Pain and the Great One (1984) with a series of four chapter books. Like Blume’s books for older audiences, her books for younger readers contain language, situations, and concerns that ring true to the age group, ranging from sibling rivalry to bullying. Blume’s use of a first-person narrative allows her to speak to readers in the relatable voice of her youthful characters. Though her books often deal with difficult topics such as divorce, puberty, and sexuality, these topics are never treated with a judgmental tone.

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Novels for adults and campaigns against censorship

Blume also penned four novels for adults: Wifey (1978), Smart Women (1983), Summer Sisters (1998), and In the Unlikely Event (2015). She collected letters from young readers for the book Letters to Judy: What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You (1986). Proceeds from that book and select others went to the Kids Fund, which she established in 1981 to offer support to nonprofit organizations that encouraged communication between parents and children.

Finding her works the focus of book-banning campaigns in the 1980s, Blume became a resolute advocate for intellectual freedom and a board member with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). For Places I Never Meant to Be (2001), Blume invited other YA writers whose work had been censored or challenged to contribute original stories to benefit the NCAC.

In 2024 Blume received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. The organization cited her as an author whose novels “inspired generations of young readers by tackling the emotional turbulence of girlhood and adolescence with authenticity, candor, and courage” and as “a relentless opponent of censorship and an iconic champion of literary freedom.”

Other honors

In 2000 Blume was named a U.S. Library of Congress Living Legend. Her many other honors include the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award (1983), the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2004), and the E.B. White Award for lifetime achievement in children’s literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017).

The documentary Judy Blume Forever appeared in 2023. Biographies of Blume include Judy Blume: A Life (2026) by Mark Oppenheimer, who interviewed more than 100 people in the author’s circle, and Otherwise Known as Judy the Great (2026), a picture book by Selina Alko that tells Blume’s life story in verse.