Jennifer Mathieu is the first-time author of The Truth About Alice (Roaring Brook, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. When Healy High star quarterback, Brandon Fitzsimmons, dies in a car crash, it was because he was sexting with Alice.
Continue Reading New Voice: Jennifer Mathieu on The Truth About Alice »
M.K. Hutchins is the first-time author of Drift (Tu Books, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Tenjat lives on the shores of Hell, an ocean filled with ravenous naga monsters. His island, a massive Turtle, is slowed by the people living on its back.
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Get It Write This Summer from Nerdy Chicks Rule Summer School 2014. Peek: “Kidlit Summer School is a four week writer’s workshop that will run from July 21 through August 15. Because we (Kami (Kinard) and Sudipta (Bardhan-Quallen)) both enjoy teaching writing classes, we wanted to find a way to offer craft-based writing advice on a particular topic each summer.
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I heard about the Utah Arts Council Original Writing Competition from one of my grad school professors. This was in 2007–I’d been writing novels for seven years. I had five novels drafted and had been sending books out for years and receiving form rejections.
So when I heard about the Young Adult Novel category,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Janci Patterson on Writing Contests »
The youth literature community is deeply saddened by the sudden death of Nancy Garden, age 76, on June 23.
Nancy was a groundbreaking author, perhaps best known for her YA love story, Annie On My Mind (FSG, 1982).
I’m honored to say that she graced this online platform with her wisdom and,
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When I visit classrooms and talk about storytelling, I often discuss the “seeds” of stories. And how the best seeds come from real moments in our life; moments of great joy, or sadness, fear or confusion.
They’re the nuggets of truth that often inspire a story,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Shannon Wiersbitzky on Fiction as a Form of Truth »
By Ann E. Burg
Sometimes when I visit schools I bring a beat up old pot filled with trinkets and toys, gadgets and gizmos, photographs and mementoes.
My mother’s sister gave me the pot when I first went out on my own.
She and my mother subscribed to the culinary philosophy if you can read,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Ann E. Burg on Serafina’s Promise »
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Plotting Can Be for You by Susanne Winnacker from Adventures in YA Publishing. Peek: “So despite the fact that I hated going into things without a plan, I tried to write my book without an outline. It would be fun, right?”
Carolyn & Lupe AKA “Team Flores”
By Carolyn Dee Flores & Lupe Ruiz-Flores
LR: We call ourselves “Team Flores.”
Although my daughter, illustrator Carolyn Dee Flores, and I have never worked together on a book, we hope to someday.
We team together when we make joint presentations and provide the moral support for each other.
When I wrote Hung Up (Simon Pulse, 2014), I knew before I typed the first word that the entire book would be written in phone conversations.
No traditional scenes. No chapters.
No physical descriptions, besides what I could work naturally into dialogue.
It was my tenth novel–the first I’d written in that format–and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Continue Reading Guest Post & Giveaway: Kristen Tracy on Can You Hear Me Now? & Writing Dialogue »
