News & Events

I’ll be presenting at the fourth annual Mining the Story writing retreat at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts next year (May 29-31), alongside a wonderful faculty including Patricia McNair, Shawn Shiflett, Chris Maul Rice, Eric May, and Philip Hartigan. It’s a three day event in an inspiring location in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. To find out more, click here. Join me if you can!

This picture book made me chuckle. How about a sloth as a pet? Click here to read my review.

I’m excited to be presenting at the Galena Lit Fest 2020 on January 8, at 10am at the Galena Public Library . I’ll give an overview of writing for different age groups of children from picture books to young adult. Attendees will be guided through creative exercises designed to kick start new kidlit ideas. Attendees should come equipped with pens/pencils and notebooks. If you’re interested in joining me, please register by clicking here. Hope to see you there!

This picture book is a great celebration of the messy creative process and how making ‘mistakes’ can offer all sorts of opportunities. Click here to read my book review.

Am halfway through the Tale of Two Writing Cities junior high summer camp. My students are full of inventive ideas and enthusiasm — Greek gods, murders, uncovered secrets and summoned angels have appeared on the page so far. I wonder which stories we’ll uncover tomorrow.

So the results are in! And there are not one but TWO winners of my competition this year. Cooper Dunlop told a wonderfully tense story about an unsuspecting turtle signing up for gruesome science experiments in Turtle Time. Ella Happel created a vivid and atmospheric world of terrifying emporers and alchemists in Remembering Death, A Historical Fiction. To read more about the other excellent ribbon-winning entries, click here.

Have you read Superbat? This is an excellent picture book for animal lovers and superhero fans. If you’d like to read my review, including some comments by my little Story Explorers, please click here.

For my latest book review, I chose Patricia Toht’s Dress Like A Girl, illustrated by Lorian Tu-Dean. An uplifting, empowering story — check out what I thought by clicking here.

I’ll miss my little Story Explorers now that our class is over. These first and second graders were full of enthusiasm and creativity — this week, I learned about Tarantula Island, The Army Base, a black and white world in need of color and many more brilliant stories. Here are some of the books we read together… To find out more about my classes, click here.

Remember the picture book drive that I organized for my stepdaughter, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa? To see my initial post, click here. Thanks to the generosity of SCBWI Illinois, librarians, teachers and other donors, I ended up collecting nine boxes of books. Next challenge: how to get said boxes to Africa? Answer: the wonderful Lesotho Nutrition Initiative took them alongside their nutrition packages for the children of Lesotho. Several months later, the books arrived and Lepholisa Primary School has the beginnings of a new school library. Check out the thank you photos below.