R.J. PALACIO

R.J. Palacio is the pen name of Raquel Jaramillo, an American author and book jacket designer born in New York City in 1963. Before turning to writing, she spent more than two decades designing book covers for major publishers, working with authors such as Sue Grafton and Thomas Pynchon.

Palacio rose to fame with her debut novel, Wonder (2012), inspired by a real encounter in which her young son cried upon seeing a girl with a facial difference. The novel tells the moving story of Auggie Pullman, a boy with Treacher Collins syndrome entering mainstream school for the first time. Wonder became a global phenomenon, spending over 120 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and popularizing the anti-bullying message "Choose Kind." It was adapted into a successful 2017 film starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay.

She followed with Auggie & Me (2015), a companion volume containing three stories from other characters' perspectives, and 365 Days of Wonder (2014), a collection of precepts. She also created We're All Wonders (2017), a picture book for younger readers, and the graphic novel White Bird (2019), a Holocaust-era story adapted into a film in 2023. Her second novel, Pony (2021), follows a boy's perilous frontier quest to find his father.