Christopher Paul Curtis is an American children's author and a Newbery Medal winner who wrote the The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963 and the critically acclaimed Bud, Not Buddy. Bud, Not Buddy is the first novel to receive both the Coretta Scott King Award and the Newbery Medal. His newest book, entitled Elijah of Buxton (winner of the Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and a Newbery Honor) is set in a free Black community in Ontario that was founded in the 1849 by runaway slaves.

Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan, the partial setting of many of his books. One such example is Bucking the Sarge, which is about a 15-year-old boy named Luther T. Ferrel, who is dissatisfied with growing up in that city. Curtis is an alumnus of University Of Michigan-Flint.

Curtis and his wife, Kaysandra, have two children, Steven and Cydney. Christopher modeled characters in Bud, Not Buddy after his two grandfathers--Earl "Lefty" Lewis, a Negro Baseball League pitcher, and 1930s bandleader Herman E. Curtis, Sr., of Herman Curtis and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression.