Erika Thulin Dawes

Erika Thulin Dawes is a Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A former elementary classroom teacher, reading specialist, and district literacy administrator, Erika now teaches and mentors courses in early childhood literacy, children's literature, and elementary literacy methods. Prior to Lesley, Erika taught literacy methods courses at Teachers College, Columbia University. Erika currently serves as the Program Director of the graduate Early Childhood Education program.

Along with Mary Ann Cappiello, she is the co-author of Teaching with Text Sets (Shell, 2013) and Teaching to Complexity: A Framework for Evaluating Literary and Content-Area Texts (Shell, 2015). She is a co-author of a book on writing instruction Learning to Write with Purpose: Effective Instruction in Grades 4-8 (Guilford, 2009) and the author of ancillary materials for several editions of the well-established textbook Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature, authored by her mentor Dr. Barbara Kiefer. She is a regular presenter at regional and national literacy conferences and her work has appeared in Language Arts and School Library Journal. Erika was appointed chair of the Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 2016 for a two-year term. She blogs about children's and young adult literature currently at "The Classroom Bookshelf," a School Library Journal Blog and has reviewed children's and middle grade books for Language Arts. She is also a founding member of The Biography Clearinghouse, a project of the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE.