I'm thrilled to welcome Yamile Saied Mendez to the SCBWI Blog today.
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We're eager to learn about your new children's books this year. Could you tell us what they're about?
2024 will be a fun and intensive year for me, as I have a story in an anthology, an original translation, two picture books, and two middle-grade novels coming out.
Out of Our League: 16 Stories of Girls in Sports, edited by Dahlia Adler and Jennifer Iacopelli (Macmillan, Feb 3rd, 2024)
En Estas Tierras Magicas , MG translation of On These Magic Shores (Lee & Low Books, May 12th, 2024)
Grandmas Are Magic, PB, illustrated by Minji Kim (Disney Press, August 6th, 2024)
Pockets Of Love, PB, illustrated by Sara Palacios ( Harper Collins, September 3rd, 2024)
The Beautiful Gathorme (MG): September 17th, 2024
Super secret MG: September 24th, 2024
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You write for children, young adults, and adults. Does writing books for different age groups give you a different perspective about approaching craft? If so, how?
Yes, and no. My process is very similar, whether I'm writing a picture book or a romance. But of course, editing an 85,000-word novel is much more time consuming than editing a 200-word picture book. Notice I'm saying more time consuming, not more difficult. Writing for different age groups has its set of challenges and joys.
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What is your writing process like?
I'm very eclectic. I start collecting ideas in my phone notes and my notebook. My least favorite part of the process is drafting because I love having all the pieces of the story puzzle, and arranging them during the re-writing and editing process. That's why I write my first drafts very fast, to get the story out of my system, so I can get to the fun part which is working in collaboration with my editors to make the story in my head reflect on the pages of a book.
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What is the most challenging part of your author life?
The most difficult time is how different publishing timing can be from that of everyday life. Sometimes there are long times of waiting for news, and then it seems like all deadlines fall on the same week or even day! But I like the ebbs and flows that allow me time to think about new stories to write.
What would you like to say to your readers and writers who are wondering if their voices and visions for their stories matter?
Every voice matters! Every vision matters! And no one else can tell the story that is in your heart but you. So silence the haters, and write!
Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied Mendez was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains in Utah. She's the award winning best-selling author of many books and short stories for young readers, and occasionally, for adults. She's also the co-editor of the anthologies OUR SHADOWS HAVE CLAWS: 15 LATINE MONSTER STORIES (with Amparo Ortiz) and CALLING THE MOON: 16 PERIOD STORIES FROM BIPOC AUTHORS (with Aida Salazar).
Her novel FURIA is a Reese's Book Club pick and the 2021 inaugural Pura Belpre Young Adult gold medal winner. A Walter Dean Myers inaugural grant recipient, she's also a VONA Workshop (Voices of our Nations) alumna and a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's a founding member of Las Musas, a community for Latine authors. Find her online at yamilemendez.com.
Suma Subramaniam is a recruiter by day and a children's book author by night. Her picture books include Namaste is a Greeting (2023 Crystal Kite and 2023 Northern Lights Book Award Winner), She Sang for India (2023 Northern Lights Book Award Winner and 2022 NYPL Diverse Voices Book), The Runaway Dosa, and more. Suma is also the contributing author of The Hero Next Door (Finalist-Massachusetts Book Award). Her poems have been published in Poetry Foundation's Poetry Magazine, What is Hope?, and other anthologies for children. She lives in Seattle with her family and a dog who will do anything for Indian sweets and snacks. Learn more at https://sumasubramaniam.com.
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