Your 2020 Guide to Book Festivals, Conventions, and SCBWI Events

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Books Festivals, business, ComicCon, Conventions, Critique Day, Down The Rabbit Hole, LA Comic Con, LitFest, marketing, news, OC Book Fair, PAL events, SCBWI events, Working Writer's Retreat, Writers Day, writing

Need a creative pick me up? How about a new avenue for book promotion? Or maybe you just need some quality time with like-minded writers and illustrators working on their craft. SCBWI has you covered on the craft of kidlit and our region’s list of local book festivals and conventions is sure to broaden your creative perspectives!

SCBWI Sponsored Events for 2020

MARCH 28
Writers Day
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles

Dive into craft and “Discover the Words Worth Keeping” with a full day of keynotes, critiques and agent pitch sessions. A special pre-event intensive with Harold Underdown will also give a new perspective on approaching revision to polish your work in progress. Contests, manuscript reviews and scholarships will also be available. Need more insight? Read author Charlotte Offsay’s recap of last year here.

Critiquenic 2017 offers children’s authors community, feedback on works in progress

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Critique Day, critique groups, critiques, SCBWI community, SCBWI events

By Claire Moore

So you’ve written a book – devoted countless hours (hopefully you weren’t actually counting) toward its creation. Bravo! Well done! But wait, how do you know if your book reads as you imagined, or that you’re on the right track? Critique groups, baby.

“They’re necessary,” said Sue Berger, a published author and one of the minds behind The Pen and Ink Blog, a blog devoted to the “wild, wild world of children’s literature.” This is why the Los Angeles chapter of SCBWI hosts a Critiquenic each year. This year’s event took place on Sunday, June 11th at the Skirball Cultural Center.

More than 70 writers – some aspiring, some published but beginning new works – gathered to give and receive feedback on their picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and young adult manuscripts. For longer manuscripts, writers kept their critiques to the first five pages.