Cynsations is excited to welcome Dr. Linda Weste to share the process behind her recent book, DiVERSE: Conversations with YA and Children’s Verse Novelists (Bloomsbury, 2025). Dr. Weste’s book featuring authors from the U.K., Australia and the United States is a wonderful reference text that expands our understanding of the verse-novel genre.
Congratulations to Margarita Engle on Island Creatures (Atheneum, July 8, 2025), a young adult novel in verse about childhood friends, once lost and now reconnected, and their fight to protect endangered animals. From the publisher’s description:
Every day, Vida reads to the creatures at the wildlife rescue center and dreams of her childhood in Cuba,
Continue Reading Throwback Thursday: Margarita Engle Uses Verse to Convey Emotional Essence »
Many of you might know the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) best as that organization that awards the Hans Christian Andersen Award biennially to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature. But there is so much more to the organization.
Congratulations, Lisa on the release of Novels in Verse for Teens: A Guidebook with Activities for Teachers and Librarians (ABC-CLIO, 2020)! What is it about novels in verse that fascinates you?
Thank you so much, Cynthia! I think novels in verse first grabbed my attention when I attended an event a few years ago where author Kwame Alexander performed live rap-like performances for his poems from The Crossover (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
Margarita Engle is a successful children’s-YA author with a long, distinguished career.
In children’s-YA writing, maintaining an active publishing career is arguably an even bigger challenge than breaking into the field.
Reflecting on your personal journey (creatively, career-wise, and your writer’s heart), what bumps did you encounter and how have you managed to defy the odds to achieve continued success?
Charlene Willing McManis,
photo by Pam Vaughn
If the collective noun for writers is a plot, then several subplots are mourning the loss of one of their own.
Charlene Willing McManis died May 1, 2018, at home in the small Vermont town where she had lived for the past 30-plus years.
By Traci Sorell
I first met Charlene Willing McManis at Kweli’s 2016 The Color of Children’s Literature Conference in New York City. (She’s dressed in yellow below.)
Native writers at Kweli’s
Color of Children’s Literature Conference in April 2016
Front: L to R: Charlene Willing McManis (Grand Ronde); Continue Reading Author Interview: Charlene Willing McManis on Mentorships & Believing in Your Work »
Check out the cover of Jazz Owls, a Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez (Atheneum, June 2018). Note: a young adult novel-in-verse about the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943.
Margarita says:
“During World War II,
Padma writing on the dock
One of the most vital aspects of timeless writing is voice. Every serious reader, every writer has (or must develop), a strong sense of what voice is. Yet, like time, voice eludes definition.
Of course, I’m going to try and define it. To me,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Padma Venkatraman on Voice: Writing Lean, Spare or Lush, Rich »
