Matt de la Peña followed up his Friday Fiction Intensive, focusing on dialogue, and his Saturday Keynote address with a terrific breakout session on the use of the narrator in fiction--getting out of the way of your characters and clearing the stage for them to do the work. Matt spoke to the importance of the... Continue Reading →
Keynote Speaker Rachel Vail: Building Character- Creating Believable Kids
Our final keynote for the conference was Author Rachel Vail. Rachel shared insights and stories from her children and childhood to show us how to make believable characters and stories. She talked about how books show us other layers, perspectives, experiences and a mirror to ourselves as writers and readers. She also talked about how... Continue Reading →
Caroline Sun: How to Work with Your Publicist
Caroline Sun, the Senior Publicity Manager at HarperCollins Children's Books, gave us a much-appreciated glimpse behind the publicity curtain. Here are a few of the highlights: Your editor will typically introduce you to your publicist 4-5 months before the publication date to share plans, timelines, and initial ideas. He or she will want to know... Continue Reading →
Andrew Karre: From Controversy to Craft
Andrew Karre, looking slightly blurrier than in real life Andrew Karre is the editorial director of Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab and Darby Creek, divisions of the Lerner Publishing Group. He publishes everything from picture books to YA, but focused his conference talk on YA lit, which is a cultural force these days. In a way,... Continue Reading →
Andrea Welch: Making Your Picture Book a Perfect 10 #scbwiwwa
Andrea Welch is a senior editor at the delightful Beach Lane Books, a San Diego-based imprint of Simon & Schuster. They're just a block from the beach in La Jolla (we all swooned at the pictures). A native of the Midwest, Andrea knew she wanted to be an editor when she graduated from college. But... Continue Reading →
Crystal Kite Award Presentation: Bonny Becker
The Crystal Kite Awards, voted on by peers, are given by the SCBWI each year to recognize great books from 15 regional SCBWI regions around the world. Bonny Becker chose to be presented with her Crystal Kite Award for A BEDTIME FOR BEAR here at our local Western Washington conference. The Bear books for Bonny are so... Continue Reading →
Local Success Panel: Stasia Kehoe, Kiki Hamilton, Ben Clanton, Deb Lund #scbwiwwa
This is what success looks like! (Only in real life, it has better lighting) This year we featured four local talents who make us proud: Stasia Kehoe, author of the novel in verse AUDITION; Kiki Hamilton, author of the fantasy THE FAERIE RING; Ben Clanton, author and illustrator of VOTE FOR ME; and Deb Lund,... Continue Reading →
Melissa Sweet Keynote: Play at Work
Melissa Sweet telling us how she works. Melissa Sweet, the amazing illustrator of more than 100 books for kids (!), has won all sorts of recognition for her work from outfits you might have heard of, including the New York Times and NCTE. And then there's her Caldecott Honor for A River of Words: The Story of... Continue Reading →
Helen Landalf – Keeping it Real: Bringing Authenticity to Fiction
Helen Landalf (Flyaway, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) identified three elements of authenticity in fiction and illustrated each with examples from regional author’s published books. “Most of us can just feel when a story is authentic – it’s like a punch in the gut.” “If a story feels authentic the reader has the reader firmly... Continue Reading →
Keynote Speaker Matt de la Peña: Working Class Writer
"You are what you do when nobody is watching you" Keynote speaker Matt de la Peña gave us a brief history of his journey from reluctant reader to published author (and avid reader). Matt's books share stories of identity, class, code-switching and being bi-racial. He empathized that our profession is all about patience and encouraged... Continue Reading →