Always Working to Improve

Is it time yet?? This weekend, May 11, I get to gather with an amazing faculty and the fabulous authors and illustrators of children’s books. Our reason for convening? SCBWI-San Diego’s MayFest.

Each year, the San Diego chapter of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators hosts a full day of workshops for those writers and illustrators. Some attendees will take the extra step of getting a critique from one of the gathered faculty, aiming to raise their craft on a specific manuscript—the ultimate goal being, of course, getting a book contract offer from an editor through the process of submission to publishers. Some would like to secure a literary agent, so that is also a goal for many attendees.

My role is to use my expertise from twenty-five years in publishing, both in-house and as a freelance editor, to help authors strengthen their projects with those those goals in mind…and of course with young readers’ enjoyment and enlightenment. I’ve included a photo of my fab stack is manuscripts to critique (identifying details hidden, of course).

It’s a great day each year, and I’m pleased to have been invited to participate once again.

The other faculty:

Edith Hope Fine, author

Michael Mahin, author

Sarah Baker, Associate Executive Director SCBWI

Jennifer Azantian, Agent/founder Azantian Literary Agency

Steve Breen, author, syndicated cartoonist for The San Diego Union Tribune, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Steve Mooser, author, co-founder SCBWI

Nephele Tempest, agent, The Knight Agency

Kayla Vernon Clark, Editor, Kane Miller Books

Andrea Welch, Executive Editor, Beach Lane Books