SCBWI-IL Prairie Writers Day

This past Saturday I attended the Fifth Annual SCBWI-IL Prairie Writer's Day at Harper College in Palatine.  It was amazing!  The day long conference was themed "Brick by Brick: The Architecture of Our Stories".  The panelists were wonderful and included:  Yolanda LeRoy Editorial Director at Charlesbridge, Alisha Niehaus Editor at Dial, Stacy Cantor Associate Editor at Walker Books, Nick Eliopulos Associate Editor at Random House, Michael Stearns Agent and Co-Founder of Upstart Crow Literary and award-winning author Cynthia Leitich Smith.  One of the highlights was a broadway worthy performance by Yolanda LeRoy to her song "There's no business like book business".  The day was truly spectacular!

SCBWI-IL at ALA Chicago!

This past July, I was responsible for putting together our first ever SCBWI-IL booth at the American Library Association (ALA) conference in Chicago.  What a fabulous experience!  Esther Hershenhorn, Lisa Bierman and I teamed up to make the most of this wondrous opportunity for our members.  The booth was a huge success.  We were nestled in between Scholastic and Charlesbridge.  Lots of traffic and sometimes even lines to visit with our Illinois authors and illustrators.  We had an amazing raffle including author visits, Skype visits, on-line author chats and a grand prize of an author visit anywhere in the U.S.!  For more information on The Society of Children's Book Authors and Illustrators (SCBWI) visit:  http://www.scbwi.org/ and http://www.scbwi-illinois.org/. A big highlight for me was when Richard Peck stopped by to say "hi" and check out our booth.  Really?

Turtle Magazine

My poem "Perfect Pumpkin" appears on the back cover of this month's Turtle magazine (Sept/Oct issue).  They did a great job with the illustrations.  Be sure to check it out! 

www.uskidsmags.com/magazines/turtle

Highlights Foundation Poetry Workshop

Recently I had the privilege of attending a Highlights Foundation Poetry Workshop in Pennsylvania. What a wonderful experience! My amazing teachers were Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Alice Schertle and Susan Pearson. Three remarkable women. We not only explored poetry from morning 'til night, but were also able to tour Highlights for Children and Boyds Mills Press. A wonderful weekend that I won't forget.  For more information on the Founders Workshops visit: http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/

Blog is launched!

The first entry for my blog - yikes! Here I plan to share information from writing events that I attend, things that I learn, and people that I meet along this writing journey. Hopefully my lack of techy-knowledge won't slow me down. Let the blogging begin!