One day and a wake-up until LA!

On Wednesday morning I board a plane for Los Angeles for the 40^th Anniversary SCBWI Summer conference! Let the countdown begin. I’ve printed out my schedule, wrote down my Regional Advisor duties, jotted down meetings with friends, looked at pictures of the pool and printed out the running directions from the hotel. (Have to keep up with the triathlon training, right? I hope so.)

While I’ve attended the New York City national conference, this is my first time at the West Coast event. As many of you know, I’m not a shrinking violet and I’m no stranger to the grip and grin. However, there are a thousand people registered for this event not including all the staff and faculty! I’m sure there will be moments that I’ll be overwhelmed.

Nevertheless, there are some things about conferences that just don’t change– the schedule (you got your workshops and your keynote addresses), the food (you can bank on some chicken dish), and most important when you go to an SCBWI event you will be surrounded by people who are kind, by people who are committed to making great literature and connecting children with books.

If you’re going to the conference there will be a published list of meet-ups with Regional Advisors in the States and Internationally. I’ll be meeting with New England members in the Belair Room on Friday evening between 8 and 8:30. If you see me working the registration table on Friday morning, please introduce yourself.

Also, don’t forget the Guidebook App for the conference. You can find it in the Apple or Android Apps store.

Stay tuned for an RA perspective of the conference.

What’s new with SCBWI?

I’ve wanted to post this blog since I came back from the wonderful Regional Advisor retreat in March. I know. That’s a long time and a lot has happened in that time. Of note, I finished my creative thesis and had a wonderful final grad residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts that culminated in my graduation. Yes. I am officially Anna J. Boll, MFA. But enough about me. This post is about new developments at SCBWI and how you can take advantage of them.

1. Headquarters is encouraging Regional Advisors (RA’s) to create programs that are low or no cost events. Here are just a few events that I’ve been thinking of.

Meet-Ups: Host a meet up at a local book store, the library, or popular watering hole. These events can be just social or you can ask a local author/illustrator to read from their new book, or talk about some aspect of craft or marketing.

Group Book Launch: Do you have a book coming out? I’d love to hear about it so I can connect you with others in your area who might be able to do a signing/launch activity at a local book store or library. I’m also happy to congratulate you on my blog.

Sketch Crawl: Get together with other SCBWI illustrators and go to the zoo, the aquarium, or hang out in a local park. There is plenty of subject matter for artists all around.

Portfolio Review: Have a portfolio critique session with other illustrators (live or online) so you can put your best work forward. Especially helpful before trips to major SCBWI conferences.

Museum/Library Visit: Have you always wanted to go to look at Michelson’s gallery? The Eric Carle Museum? Did you know that there’s a great Illustration exhibit in Lewiston-Auburn College until August 12th? Our own NESCBWI member David Kelly and many other authors are slated to speak at the Boston Public Library? If you’re planning to go, let’s tell other members and see if we can get a group together.

Book Clubs: Good writers have to be good readers. Would you be interested in analyzing the works of published children’s authors to discuss what makes a great story /illustration.

Figure Drawing Nights: Figure drawing is a critical skill for any artist. If you are interested, email me and we will try to get a critical mass together to hire models.

Retreat Day: Do you live on a lake, in the mountains, by the ocean? Invite a few SCBWI members to join you for a day of writing with an optional sharing/critique. Have everyone bring a dish to share for lunch and keep costs low.

***If this is a sanctioned SCBWI event, I need to know about it. Send me an email at NorthernNERA at nescbwi dot org.

2. The 40th Annual SCBWI Summer Conference is August 5th – 8th in Los Angeles and I’ll be there! Sadly, I do not own a smartphone. If I did, I’d download the amazing Guidebook App to plan my conference. It gives you a personalized schedule, and information about each speaker and session. You can also browse maps of the event space at the Hyatt, and follow the #LA11SCBWI Twitter feed directly from the app.

The app is compatible with iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches and Android devices.

To get the guide, choose one of the methods below:

Download ‘Guidebook’ from the Apple App Store or the Android Marketplace
Visit http://guidebookapp.com/getit from your phone’s browser

The guide will be listed under the "download guides" section of the application.

3. Awards and Grants:

If you haven’t looked at the SCBWI Awards and Grants recently, follow this link!

http://www.scbwi.org/Pages.aspx/Introduction

Today I’m highlighting the SCBWI Book Launch Award which provides two annual awards of $2000 each for an author or illustrator to use for marketing a book scheduled for release from a PAL publisher during the next calendar year. We all know that authors and illustrators are increasingly responsible for their own marketing. The money from this grant can be used for any kind of promotional purpose that will increase sales and visibility of the book, such as launch events, speaking engagements, book tours, curriculum materials, advertising, book trailers, website development, or community events.

Watch this space for more grant information and interviews with recent winners!

Have a great weekend.

Peace,

Anna

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.