About a year ago, I painstakingly assembled a vitae for my writing career.

Having been self-employed, it had never previously occured to me that I needed one. But increasingly, I found myself having to scramble to put together niche-market bios or support materials for grant requests or media replies. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

At this point, having compiled a vitae (and kept it updated), I recommend other writers and illustrators consider doing the same. It’s a handy reference.

In case it helps, these are my headings: Books; Short Stories; Additional Publications; Online Publishing; Teaching Experience; Judging Experience; Speaking Experience; Media Coverage; Professional Affiliations; Education; Representation (my agent). Awards are included under the above listings as applicable.

Cynsational News & Links

I was honored to read on Bartography that author Chris Barton’s son enjoyed my picture book, Jingle Dancer, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu (Morrow/Harper, 2000).

Picturing History in Picture: a chat with author Pegi Deitz Shea from the Institute of Children’s Literature.

Speaking of pictures, I spent some time this past weekend pinpointing helpful articles on writing picture books. I was most impressed with these:

Make Your Picture Book Sparkle by Peggy Tibbetts from Writing-World.com.

Writing Picture Books by Marisa Montes (includes helpful chart).