By Ellen Oh
Recently I have been talking with several other women authors about how hard it is to be a female writer. Many stressed how ironic it was given the fact that there are more women in publishing, more women writers, and more women readers.
But why, many asked, does it feel like women authors are never treated at the same level as male writers?
Continue Reading Guest Post: Ellen Oh on The Ongoing Problem with Sexism »
Whitney A. Miller is the first-time author of The Violet Hour
(Flux, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Some call VisionCrest the pinnacle of religious enlightenment.
Others call it a powerful cult.
For seventeen years,
Continue Reading New Voice: Whitney A. Miller on The Violet Hour »
Blame it on the SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators).
When I joined SCBWI over two decades ago, I’d already sold a middle-grade and was interested in writing young adult books, too. Yet most of my writer friends wrote picture books.
Whenever I went to SCBWI conferences,
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Congratulations to Carol Lynch Williams on the release of The Haven (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2014). From the promotional copy:
For the teens at The Haven, the outside world, just beyond the towering stone wall that surrounds the premises, is a dangerous unknown.
From Cynthia Leitich Smith:
Do you wear more than one hat in the children’s-YA book world? There are a lot of us. Writers who also are teachers or librarians. Illustrators who do promotional design. Retired librarians who work as consultants.
Today we welcome indie bookseller and author-illustrator Annette Simon,
Laney Nielson
By Samantha Clark of Austin SCBWI
Congratulations to Laney Nielson, who won a year’s mentorship with the inaugural Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award, at the Austin SCBWI 2014 Writers & Illustrators Working Conference last month.
Laney was one of eight nominees chosen by the conference’s critiquing faculty for their high-level writing.
Continue Reading Laney Nielson Wins Austin SCBWI Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award »
37 million girls missing…in China alone, due to the One Child Policy.
The United Nations estimates 200 million girls are missing worldwide.
What is this systematic killing of girls called?
Gendercide.
Reading these statistics I was appalled. How could this be happening today?
Continue Reading Guest Post: Lorie Ann Grover on Gendercide & Firstborn »
Varsha Bajaj is the debut novelist behind Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (Albert Whitman, 2014). From the promotional copy:
What thirteen-year-old Abby wants most is to meet her father. She just never imagined he would be a huge film star—in Bollywood!
Now she’s traveling to Mumbai to get to know her famous father.
Continue Reading New Voice: Varsha Bajaj on Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood »
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Judge My Books by Tiffany Trent from Diversity in YA. Peek: “I was so proud of my publisher for going the extra mile to get it right. And yet people were saying that they got it wrong! Some even accused them of pandering to diversity pundits just to get more attention.
A number of years ago Twentieth Century Fox went into production on a script based on my novel, How I Created My Perfect Prom Date (Simon Pulse).
This, as I’m sure you can imagine, was pretty exciting stuff, and, I imagined hopefully, possibly even an opportunity to improve my visibility among the Hollywood decision makers of the day.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Todd Strasser on Water Seeks Its Own Level: Finding the Right Agent »
