The SCBWI Annual Conference
Good times with Good People
I am home after a lovely time in New York City where I attended the annual SCBWI Winter Conference and got to hang out with my best friend from college, the great Kari Janes, who coaches for the Manhattan Soccer Club.
My friend Kari has been with me through a lot of the ups and downs in life, and her friendship this past year especially has been a gift. I was sad to see her move across the country to NYC, but so excited for the opportunity she is taking in her coaching career. Remember the name! I got to join her for a practice with her U13 team on Randall’s Island. It surprised me zero bit that she already knows her way around the city and I was just trying to keep up on the e-bike haha.
The majority of the conference was on Saturday and Sunday. Friday I had a brief manuscript consult with a literary agent. It was so helpful to have an actual conversation with an agent and learn about what I should have prepared when submitting queries as an author/illustrator looking for representation.
The Conference
A beneficial aspect of attending a conference like this was the new connections, but also the content and creative labs were very useful. I returned home feeling physically and socially spent, but creatively energized and refreshed. The kids’ lit world continues to maintain its initial impression of being a space for collaboration over competition. That’s nice. Here are some of the essentials I brought along.
I did forget a toothbrush and toothpaste and will never make that mistake again after spending $22 in the gift shop to solve that problem. Oops.
I did not have the guts to enter the Illustrator Portfolio Showcase—and I missed attending because I was putt-putting with Kari, but hope to enter another year when my portfolio feels more cohesive.
The keynote speakers were wonderful and the panel Q&A’s were very insightful. Joseph Coelho kicked it off with a captivating talk about poetry and shared several delightful prompts, like the “one-word poem” and MORERAPS… which if I were still teaching would be something I’d put into practice immediately!
Then I attended a picture book creative lab with author-illustrator Claudia Rueda. She had us all plot out the same text on a storyboard, deciding when the page turns would be and what the illustration was telling us that the text was not. There I got to meet Tischa Brown and Wendy Bernstein, and we connected further over lunch.
I’m realizing this post could be a long list of names so I won’t do that to you but I will tell you a couple of embarrassing moments…
Embarrassing Moments
I sat next to Steve Sheinkin twice in the keynote addresses and did not realize who Steve Sheinkin was until Steve Sheinkin told me that he is Steve Sheinkin. And let me tell you, Steve Sheinkin is a very kind human and you should go buy all of his non-fiction narrative books. I’m excited to read Fallout about Spies, Superbombs, and the “Ultimate Cold War Showdown.”
I also got to hear Cece Bell’s keynote address and then attend her Creative Lab about Tragedy and Comedy in Graphic Novel Memoirs, which is epic timing because I am working on just that this semester at Hamline. During Cece’s workshop, I got to sit next to Debbie Ridpath Ohi, author and illustrator from Toronto. She has illustrated books for authors like Judy Blume and several of her own books as well.
We were ambling about the hotel trying to find the breakout room. She asked me for a card and we got a photo together. I handed her one of my cards with the Harlem storefront and bike on it… explaining how my style is concrete realism, and she asked more about that because she doesn’t have formal art training and didn’t go to art school. I laughed and said that I had no idea what concrete realism means either, I just had someone tell me that in a portfolio review and we shared a really good laugh.
At the end of the lab, I got to meet Cece Bell and she signed my copy of El Deafo. It was fun timing because I just got done reading her book and writing a critical essay about how onomatopoeia is some of the only stand-alone words that have an intrinsic ability to show and not tell—which is done so magically in her book El Deafo…when she realizes as a kid that she can use her phonic ear to hear her teacher in the bathroom!
There are several other people I got to connect with at the conference (Jerry Bennett, Leslie Nightingale, Taylor Carlson, and more!)… I’m so grateful to be a part of such a supportive society! Thanks for reading—please share this with a friend who loves kids’ lit and mildly embarrassing moments.