Meet the author

Ibtihaj Muhammad.

Writer · United States · b. 1985

Ibtihaj Muhammad: Olympic fencer turned picture-book author, whose bestselling Proudest Blue hijab trilogy celebrates faith, family and self-respect with warmth and lived authority.

Ibtihaj Muhammad is an American author and Olympic sabre fencer, born in 1985, who in 2016 became the first American woman to compete at the Olympics in hijab and the first American Muslim woman to win an Olympic medal. In children's publishing she is known for the hijab trilogy, written with S.K. Ali and illustrated by Hatem Aly: The Proudest Blue, an instant New York Times bestseller in which little Faizah watches her big sister meet cruelty with grace on her first day of hijab; the gentler companion The Kindest Red; and The Boldest White, which draws on Muhammad's own fencing to close the sequence. Warm, tender and empowering, her picture books celebrate faith, family, sisterhood and self-respect, and have become go-to titles for inclusive read-alouds. Drawn from lived experience, they carry quiet authority.