Tag: nescbwi

Illustrator Day! Give Away #1

I know that you were all waiting with bated breath to see who would win prize #1 in our Illustrator Day! Give away. 

Thanks to the folks who helped us spread the work about Illustrator Day!:

Then my faithful assistants drew a name:

And the winner is…

@melindabeavers
(Who also won the NESCBWI poster contest at the last conference. Melinda Beavers, I think you have to move to New England now!)
As soon as Melinda sends me an address, I'll send her a sketchbook, pencils and an eraser.

Next drawing: next Monday, 11/7/11

IF you missed the original call for help, here's the gist. New England SCBWI is sponsoring an amazing afternoon of speakers and workshops for working and aspiring illustrators. The event venue has been generously donated by New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH. Illustrator Day! is November 19th from 1-6 pm. Help us spread the word.

  • Link to this blog post with twitter (use #illustratorday so I can keep track),
  • or share on facebook (tag me in the comments),
  • or blog about the event (send me your link).

To register for Illustrator Day!

Prizes?! Illustrator Day?! Awesome!

Did someone say prizes? Well, yes I did. You could win a sketchbook, 

OR drawing materials,

OR Illustrator Day Keynote Speaker, Salley Mavor's Golden Kite Winning Book

Shop Indie Bookstores

How? You might ask…how could I win one of these great prizes?
You can help me publicize NESCBWI's Illustrator Day event.
1. Share this blog post on facebook and tag me so I know you did it.
2. Tweet or retweet this blog post and other info about the event with the hashtag #illustratorday.
I'll put all of your names and tweet handles in a box and pick out names until the prizes are gone- from now until:
ILLUSTRATOR DAY!

When: Saturday, November 19, 2011
Time: 1:00-6:00
Where: Emma Blood French Auditorium (The French Building) on the New Hampshire Institute of Art campus in Manchester, NH. 
The schedule for Illustrator Day 2011 will be as follows:
(Please note this is an updated schedule with a later registration time. AJB 10-25-11)

1:00–1:30 Registration
1:30 Welcome
1:45-2:45 Salley Mavor – Keynote Golden Kite Winner 2011
(5 min break)
2:50-3:50 Carol Goldenberg Award winning Book Designer
(25 min snack break)
4:15-5:00 Carlyn Beccia and Jennifer Morris Digital Painting Duels Encore
from the 2010 Annual Conference
(5 min break)
5:05-6:00 continued Digital Painting Duels
Registration Fees for SCBWI Members and Students: $50 all day
Public Registration Fee: $75 all day.
Checks should be payable to NESCBWI and should be sent by November 15th.

For more information and to register click here! Now! No, really, now.

Five on Friday

1. Don't forget that the NYC SCBWI conference registration starts on Monday, 10 am PDT. Hopefully you got your postcard in the mail. If not, click here for more information.

2. My husband came home on surprise visit. He's away with the Navy and hasn't been home for a month. The whole family is very happy and I can't believe how relaxing it is to just write, plan my next lesson, do SCBWI stuff, and exercise without having to shuttle children, take care of the dog, make dinner, do laundry, clean the car, and vacuum the stairs. (The last two I just don't do when he's not here.) We'll see him again next weekend at the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI conference in Dulles, VA.

3. My WIP is moving forward fabulously. A huge thank you and shout out to the entire community for their cheering and support as I tackle daily word count. Another huge thank you to my fellow Cheese Sandwiches who check in with me during the week to make sure we are all on track. It takes a village to write a book.

4. Speaking of a village. Another shout out goes to Lynn Conway, a librarian at Georgetown University who helped me this week by answering silly questions about Riggs Library such as: Do the stairs in the library cling or clang when you ascend? What stained glass is in the round windows? Are the book cases painted gold or do they just shine in the pictures because of the flash? Once again I'm reminded of the awesome and selfless nature of the librarian.

5. Casey Girard, NESCBWI Illustrator Coordinator has been working hard to put together an Illustrator Day Event for the region. Here's what we know. It will be on November 19th from 1 pm – 6 pm at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH. (Yes. In a month.) It will include an award-winning book designer, Carol Goldenberg, and a reprise of the "Dueling Digital Painters" Workshop with Carlyn Beccia, and Jennifer Morris from the spring NESCBWI conference. Keynote speaker to be announced! Watch this space and www.nescbwi.org for more information.

Member Monday: New England RA Meeting

Hello New England Writers and Illustrators!
Yesterday, all of the RA's and ARA's from the New England came together with the Conference Co-Directors to review all the fabulous events and programs that are in the works and to discuss how to best serve the membership. These meetings tend to happy every six months or so. One big one a couple months before the big annual NESCBWI conference, and one a few months after.

The conference plans are cruising along under the enthusiastic and well-organized eyes of Kathryn Hulik and Joyce Johnson. They are working closely with volunteer coordinators, editor/agent recruiters, critique and quick query coordinators, and the registrar to plan a fabulous conference. Remember that all of us who work for SCBWI are volunteers. If you'd like to get involved, follow this link to get more information. The deadline for conference workshop proposals is this Friday, September 16th and the committee reported that they already have over 100 proposals for conference workshops. (Click here if you'd like to know more.) The competition to present will be tight this year but our new venue won't. This year's conference, "Keeping it Real: Reality and World-building in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Illustration" will take place April 20-22, 2012 at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel, Springfield, MA.

The competition to present will be tight this year but our new venue won't. This year's conference, "Keeping it Real: Reality and World-building in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Illustration" will take place April 20-22, 2012 at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel, Springfield, MA. The ballroom is so big that the directors are planning a sit-down lunch. There are also plenty of break-out rooms for great workshops!
 
I’d love for all of you to take a moment to go to the SCBWI site and look at the top menu. You’ll see a pull down tab labeled “Regions.” Click on “Regional Chapters” and find your state in red text in the “United States of America” box. When you click there, you’ll see five tabs. The first is “Basic Information.” This shows a basic blurb about us and our website. Next you’ll see that I’ve uploaded a current copy of the NESCBWI Newsletter. That means that you don’t have to go through a variety of hoops to get it. (It’s also available under the “Regional News” tab.) I’ve also uploaded some of the bigger NESCBWI events that are in the works. (More details on these are on the “Upcoming Events” tab.) Finally, information and links about the annual conference, including volunteering info is located under the “Regional Conference” tab. When the registration link comes out in January, I’ll post that too.
 
The meeting was very productive. Newsletter Features Editor, Francine Puckly is working on a way that you all can share news and events through a Google Form that will get published in the newsletter. We are all working on how to share information from SCBWI national with all of you. And here is some BIG news.

New England SCBWI welcomes Casey Girard as our new Illustrator Coordinator. Casey will work with all three New England RA's to better serve the needs of our illustrator members. Casey and I will be working on establishing an Northern New England ENCORE! program of the best illustrator workshops from our annual conference. We are hoping she can revive our "Illustrator Day" with speakers and demonstrations, and plan sketch crawls and retreats.  Congratulations, Casey and thank you for all the work you've already done to coordinate the conference Illustrator's Academy for the last two years!
 
Keep writing and drawing!
Anna

Five on Friday

1. Friday is supposed to be my writing day and I’ve failed miserably. After many self-admonishments to keep Friday’s sacred for writing I spent most of the day editing the newsletter for my paying job. I know, relax, right? Money is a necessary evil and I had all of Wednesday to write because of the snow day and I’ve been keeping up with my early morning writing sessions. In fact, I’m at a point where I should just print what I have and revise through the weekend. My deadline is Tuesday and I want it to be good. So I should just chill.
2. Snow. A lot of it. It’s beautiful and a heck of a lot better then the mud that’s sure to follow. Enough said.
3. The NESCBWI conference registration opens on the 15th of February. Go to the website and check out information about schedule and special offerings. This is New England’s 25th anniversary conference so there’s tons going on. Get your manuscripts ready for Quick Queries, and Critiques.
4. I’m excited that I have some books lined up to review for the spring. March is Women’s History Month and I’ll be reviewing Women of the Golden State written by Linda Crotta Brennan and others. Later in the spring, J.L. Powers will be joining me in the Chaos for an interview regarding her book This Thing Called the Future which is due out May 1. I have a couple of others up my sleeve if I can get to them.
5. My boys are amazing, smart, and talented and that’s just my unbiased opinion. I’m taking them to Blue Man Group on Sunday to celebrate report cards, swimming races, and performances. I am so very lucky to be their Mom.

What’s with that race and religion stuff in the NESCBWI eval?

First, I want to thank Anindita Sempere ( ) and Greg Fishbone for an amazing conference. The expertise of faculty was fabulous, the keynoters engaging and informative and the company… well I absolutely thrive and am inspired by all the wonderful NESCBWI members.

Over the weekend, I had no responsibilities so I was happy to meet people (whom I could remember since I wasn’t in Director-land) and listen to some concerns in my brandie new position as Northern New England RA. One that I heard more than once was about the demographics questions on the evaluation sheets. I inserted those into the eval last year so I thought I could explain the thinking behind that.

The theme of last year’s conference, if you remember, was "Many Voices." I chose that theme because it is important to me that every child recognize themselves (or someone like themselves) in books that we write, illustrate and publish. To that end, many of the workshops had to do with sensitive portrayals of various cultures, issues and concerns in "mulitcultural" publishing, etc. I made a sincere effort to recruit and hire well-qualified authors and illustrators of color onto the faculty in the hopes that this would ultimately draw new minority voices to the membership of NE SCBWI.

But how would we measure that?

I designed the demographic questions to be short and to the point so that we could collect data and establish a baseline from which we could see how the membership trended. We hope to collect this data for the next 5 or so years.

But what about that religion question? Why do you need to know that?

Well, I am Jewish. And I always feel that when I fill out those questionnaires that just saying that I’m "Caucasian" leaves my cultural identity uncounted. I’m sure there are others from various cultures who feel that way too.

Of course it is your choice to respond to the demographic questions at all, but now you know why they are there.