Cynsations is celebrating its 20th anniversary by switching to a quarterly publishing schedule, featuring in-depth interviews and articles. Thank you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm!
By AJ Eversole
Leslie Stall Widener is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation and registered Choctaw artist who has illustrated six Choctaw related picture books.
Continue Reading Curator Interview: Leslie Stall Widener on the Choctaw Culture Keepers Series »
Spotlight image: Debut author Anna Sortino
Happy Deaf Awareness Month! I’m Kerry O’Malley Cerra, and I’m here with Anna Sortino to help you celebrate September with books representing d/Deaf and hard of hearing experiences. We’re calling this Five in Five (x2).
Continue Reading Guest Interview: Five in Five with Authors Kerry O’Malley Cerra & Anna Sortino »
As a young adult author and former high school teacher who loves reading lists full of unique voices and identities, I find recent news about banned books heartbreaking.
Back in 1986, I wrote a high school research paper about book censorship, and here we are again. I dived back into this problem as an MFA student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Lyn Hawks on How YA Is Literary: The Search for an Abundant Canon »
Not too far off the beaten track in Austin, visitors are welcomed to The Writing Barn retreat center, a place where deer wander the meadows, the buildings are air conditioned and rooms are filled with bookshelves. There, thirteen Native participants gathered the weekend of Aug. 4 to Aug.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Patricia Morris Buckley on the We Need Diverse Books Native Intensive »
A writing community can make all the difference in navigating the long and often frustrating journey of becoming a published author. Whether it’s sharing craft tips or submission opportunities, writing buddies provide the encouragement and support needed for going the distance. But connecting can be a challenge, especially if a given community represents a small percentage of the population.
Continue Reading WNDB Native Children’s – YA Writing Intensive Applications Open »
We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) has announced the opening of the application process for the 2021 WNDB Internship Grants. In the program’s successful first six years, fifty-four diverse publishing interns received supplemental grants. Of the fifty-four grantees who have since graduated from their educational institution, thirty-four have gone on to pursue full-time work in publishing.
I’m excited to introduce our readers to Roseanne A. Brown, author of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin (Balzar + Bray, 2020), and Diana Ma, author of Heiress Apparently (Abrams, 2020). While these two YA debut novels may seem different in genre and tone,
Many people believe that fiction is creative writing drawn from the depths of a writer’s soul, while nonfiction is simply a recitation of facts gathered from a few standard sources. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To put this troubling misconception to rest, fifty of today’s most celebrated authors for children have come together to share a critical part of the nonfiction writing process that often goes unseen.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Melissa Stewart Shares How Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep »
Deborah Wiles 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?
I was born and raised in India and had always been a reader since I was a child. Most of my time while in school and outside school was spent in the library. We didn’t travel much. We couldn’t afford to travel much. But my parents filled my life with books.
Continue Reading Cynsations Intern: Suma Subramaniam on Her Love of Books »