MICHELLE MARKEL is a successful writer and a local SCBWI member! She’s the author of Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909, which won the Bank Street Flora Stieglitz Straus Award and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for Younger Children, and was also chosen as an NCTE Orbis Picture Honor Book. Her recent titles are Balderdash!: John Newbery and the Boisterous Birth of Children’s Books and Out of This World: The Surreal Art of Leonora Carrington.
CHRISTINE VAN ZANDT: Welcome to Kite Tales! Your career has included a number of popular narrative nonfiction books as well as some fiction. How is the industry changing?
MICHELLE MARKEL: The field of narrative nonfiction has busted open. There are now books about little known historical events, unsung heroes, and underrepresented groups (women and people of color). Editors are interested in expressive language, innovative artwork, and uncommon formats. They’re looking for creative “hooks” to grab young readers. If you love telling stories, and love nonfiction, this is your moment.
CVZ: What’s your writing process for your biographies? Continue reading
It was another year of very strong entries in the SCBWI L.A. Writers Day Contest. As usual, manuscripts were submitted in four categories: Young Adult, Middle Grade, Picture Book, and Other (which includes poetry and non-fiction). First place winners in each category receive free tuition to next year’s Writer’s Day, as well as a manuscript critique from one of this year’s faculty members. If you’d like to contact any of the winners to request their manuscript or discuss publication, please let us know!
HAPPY HANNUKAH! There is a lot to celebrate this season, including SCBWI members’ publishing news! Check out whose book is coming to a platform near you or around the world:
Hanukkah Hamster, by Michelle Markel, illustrated by Andre Colin, Sleeping Bear, ages 5 – 7, Picture Book, ISBN: 978-1-58536-399-5, released 09/15/2018.
Every year, SCBWI Los Angeles opens our Writers Day contest to all members attending the event. This year, our anonymous judges chose 10 honorees in Young Adult, Middle Grade, Picture Book, and Other (which includes poetry and non-fiction). First place winners in each category receive free tuition to next year’s Writers Day, as well as a manuscript critique from one of this year’s faculty members. There were a lot of wonderful entries and a “20% of total entries” guideline was used to determine how many manuscripts were honored in each category. As Contest Coordinator Karol Ruth Silverstein so aptly put it, “Regardless of whether you win or lose, putting your work out there to be judged by entering the contest is a courageous act in itself. So let me first congratulate all of you who entered.”
SCBWI member Anne Berry is an illustrator living and working in Huntington Beach, California. She’s been doodling ever since she found paper and pencil, and could get her cats to sit long enough for a portrait. At the 2015 SCBWI Summer Conference, she won the SCBWI Mentorship Program award and the Portfolio Honor Award. Read on for her valuable tips about perfecting your own portfolio and to check out her awesome illustrations!
A Charmed Life / Una Vida con Suerte, by Gladys E. Barbieri, illustrated by Lisa Fields, Arte Público Press, ages 4-8, bilingual picture book, ISBN: 978-1-55885-827-5, released 05/30/2016.