Amanda McRaney Jenkins (born 1961) is an American writer of young adult fiction. Her novels have received considerable recognition, including the for Breaking Boxes, and a Printz Honor for Repossessed. In 2005 she received the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, a stipend intended to grant a measure of financial freedom to a writer of children's or YA literature. Jenkins was born in 1961 and has lived all her life in Texas She now lives in Benbrook with two of her three sons and assorted pets. Before writing full-time, she was a high school math teacher.