Virginia Sorensen: Mormon Author

Virginia Sorensen was a novelist and children’s book author. Her children’s book Miracles on Maple Hill was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1957.

Sorensen’s first novel, A little Lower Than the Angels, was published in 1942. Other titles include The Evening and the Morning, Many Heavens, Kingdom Come, The Neighbors, On the Star, Where Nothing Is Long Ago, and The Man with the Key. She drew upon her upbringing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in crafting her books. For children she wrote Curious Missie, Plain Girl, Lotte’s Locket, Around the Corner, and Friends of the Road Atheneum.

She was born on February 17, 1912, in Provo, Utah, and raised in Utah. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University. She also studied at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and at Stanford University. She lived in Indiana, Michigan, Colorado, Alabama, Pennsylvania. She also lived in Mexico and Denmark as the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships for Creative Arts. In 1946 she studied a tribe of Mexican Indians, and in 1954 she studied the history of Utah’s Sanpete Valley settlers from Denmark. She lived for a time in Morocco with her second husband. She is the mother of two children.

She died on December 24, 1991.