Writing resolutions: Be thankful

I’m not usually one to make New Year’s resolutions. I never seem to be able to maintain them. But as 2022 rolled in, and the Covid-19 pandemic rolled out (I thought), I decided to set some high-bar goals. For a short while, I’d transition away from illustrating to focus more on my writing. I’d write a proposal for a graphic novel memoir. I’d finish writing some picture books I’d started but never finished.  I’d also take an online writing course. 2022 was gonna be my big writing year—except that we are now into May, and I haven’t written one new thing. Sigh. How can I continue to call myself a writer when I’ve not written anything in months?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a slacker. Once I’ve had my morning coffee and chocolate (followed by a 1500 yard swim), I’m fairly productive. With schools and literary events coming back into full swing, I’m now traveling, doing in-person school visits, conferences, and book festivals. I revised and completed two picture book manuscripts written last year and under contract. I finished illustrating my next picture book. And, to my surprise, I even managed to accumulate a few accolades—the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writer Award, a Christopher Award, and recently I was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

As I’ve slowly come out of pandemic lockdown and travel, I’ve had the pleasure to chat with many other writers and illustrators. We’ve had meaningful conversations about work, our families, travel adventures—and of course, the past couple of years during the pandemic. Many authors and illustrators have lost people they loved. Many have lost work and income, a sense of security—stories to turn the heart blue. These stories made me realize that I’ve been lucky—no, heck, I’ve been blessed! I haven’t lost much, and in retrospect, I’ve gained a lot.

So for the last six months of 2022, as the pandemic continues, as the world edges closer to war, and as our politics are move divided than ever, I’m adjusting my goals. I’m focusing more on being aware of the needs of others. I’m more committed to being kind, forgiving, and giving grace to those around me. I’m going to be thankful for what and who I have in my life. The writing, it will come.

Don Tate is the award-winning author and/or illustrator of numerous picture book biographies, including PIGSKINS TO PAINTBRUSHES: THE STORY OF FOOTBALL PLAYING ARTIST EARNIE BARNES (Abrams, 2021) and SWISH! THE SLAM-DUNKING, ALLEY-OOPING, HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS (Little Brown, 2020). His WILLIAM STILL AND HIS FREEDOM STORIES: THE FATHER OF THE UNDERGROUND  RAILROAD (Peachtree, 2020) was an SCBWI Golden Kite winner in the nonfiction category. Don is a founding host of the Brown Bookshelf, a blog dedicated to advocating for Black authors and illustrators writing for children. When Don isn’t writing, illustrating or visiting elementary schools, he enjoys working out, swimming, yoga, and anything sweet and chocolaty.

The 2022 SCBWI Winter Conference is Here! #scbwiWinter22

With socials starting today and leading up through the official conference kickoff with a keynote from Brian Selznick, with panels (agents, editors, art directors!) and keynotes and then an entire day to get "up close" with publishing professionals, special illustrator sessions, all the way to Sunday's awards and wrap-up (and even a GenNext Twitter social) we're in for an amazing few days of connection, inspiration, craft, business, opportunity, and community.

Check out the full schedule and all the conference offers here.

And whether you're able to attend or not, head over to the Official SCBWI Conference Blog (at http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/) for live blogging from a great team of authors and illustrators, including Don Tate, Jolie Stekly, Jaime Temairik, Debbie Ohi, and myself, Lee Wind.

Here's to a great conference ahead!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Did You See The SCBWI Special Event: #KIDLITBLACKHISTORY Month Family Feud, with Host Kwame Alexander? If Not, Here's the Recording.

Kwame Alexander (bottom right) hosts, Don Tate (bottom left) represents The Brown Bookshelf, and April Powers (top left) represents SCBWI, the event's sponsors. Also show in this image is sign language interpreter,Vania Mollinedo (top right).

Check out this remarkable (and remarkably fun) event with children’s book creators Kwame Alexander, Jerry Craft, Van G. Garrett, Lamar Giles, Kwame Mbalia, Breanna J. McDaniel, Oge Mora, Karyn Parsons, and Alicia D. Williams -- a Family Feud-inspired trivia night celebrating Black history.

Sponsored by SCBWI (repped by April Powers) and The Brown Bookshelf (repped by Don Tate), you can find details and the link to download the #kidlitblackhistorymonth trivia questions and answers here.

As April says in the intro, it's an event "Centering Black Lives, Black Joy, and Black Stories."

Don Tate spoke about how "Black history month should be celebrated throughout the year" - and I agree! He spoke about how Black history is under attack, and called to children's book creators, saying "Keep writing those books. We need those books that celebrate Black girl magic, and Black boy joy, but yes, we also need those books that tell the truth about our history."

It's important, educational, and entertaining! Watch it now.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Getting it Right: Don Tate Shares His Visual Research Process for Illustrating "Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions"

In this blog post, “Whoosh!” Research and texting with Lonnie Johnson, illustrator Don Tate considers the challenges of illustrating this nonfiction picture book (written by Chris Barton), and shares how Don ultimately connected directly with the book's subject to get things right.

Just one example: 

The beginning of the story begins with young Lonnie Johnson being creative in his make-shift kitchen workshop, with various things from the junk yard spread across the table. An early version of the manuscript mentioned a Chinaberry shooter in the scene. What in the heck was that? A quick Google returned several results. I created a sketch, but I was unsure. Below was my guess as to what his shooter might have looked like:

The text between images reads:

After our phone conversation, I realized my guess was wrong. I created another quick sketch and texted it off to Mr. Johnson. He answered my question with his own sketch of what his shooter would have looked like and how it would have worked. I wasn’t too far off, but now I had what I needed to be 100-percent correct!

While Don's ultimate solution of texting back and forth with his book's subject is unique, it does make the point that illustrators have to do their research as well - and sometimes, it's even more specific than the research writers need to do!

Read the full blog post here - it's well-worth it.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

The Brown Bookshelf Celebrated 28 Black Children’s Book Creators!

From Day 1's celebration of Siman Nuurali

 through Day 28's celebration of Shauntay Grant,

there are so many Black Children's Book Creators—and their books!—to discover or be reminded of anew.

See the full list (with links) at the launch post of 28 Days Later Honorees here: https://thebrownbookshelf.com/2020/01/24/announcing-the-13th-class-of-28-days-later-honorees/

And don't miss the leap year treat of Day 29, which celebrates the work of the family of people behind The Brown Bookshelf!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Don Tate on Writing Nonfiction Picture Books at Nonfiction Chicks Present: Nonfiction Fest

This excellent interview with author/illustrator Don Tate, Questions I'm Frequently Asked About Writing Nonfiction for Children, covers a lot of important ground.

 Highlights:

What is the biggest obstacle you face in writing a biography?

Creating a story. A biography isn’t a chronological list of milestones. That’s a timeline, it goes in the back matter. For me, a biography is story with a beginning, middle, and an end. A biography has a scene-to-scene plot with rising and falling action. A good biography demonstrates change in the character from beginning to end. But researching a person's life doesn’t fall so easily into my criteria. Therein lies the obstacle.

and

Many of your stories deal with hard, painful truths about U.S. history. How do you tell these stories and make them appropriate for children?

Hansel and Gretel is the story of two young kids who are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch. They are threatened to get baked in an oven. The story of Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale; it’s not nonfiction, obviously. But for generations, it was a popular story for young readers. Children are tough. They can handle tough stories. I don’t think it’s a good idea to hide our tough history from children. The enslavement of Black people was an inhumane institution that existed lawfully in the U.S. at one time. That’s an ugly truth. It should not be sugar-coated or erased. Children are our future, and they need to know what happened in the past in order to prevent bad things from happening again. That said, there are certainly things within the topic of slavery that I cannot address in a children’s book. My stories serve as an entryway to discussion.

Read the full interview here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Gearing Up For #LA18SCBWI, Whether You'll Be In L.A. or Following Along Virtually

Visit the SCBWI Official Conference Blog here!

It's here! Tomorrow's the start of the 2018 SCBWI Summer Conference here in Los Angeles, and here's how to both contribute and follow along on social media.

The official hashtag:

#LA18SCBWI

The easiest way to tap into the stream of inspiration, business tips, craft insights, opportunity, and community is to search with the hashtag on your favorite social media platform and find the people posting/tweeting/snapping about #LA18SCBWI... and then follow them, and join in the conversation yourself!




Your #LA18SCBWI Team Bloggers Are:

Martha Brockenbrough

Martha Brockenbrough is the author of several books for young readers, including Alexander Hamilton, Revolutionary (Feiwel & Friends); The Game of Love and Death; and Love, Santa (both Arthur A. Levine Books). She is a faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children & Young Adults program. Forthcoming titles include Unpresidented, a biography of Donald Trump, and Cheerful Chick, a picture book about a resilient bird with a big dream. http://martha-brockenbrough.squarespace.com/

**

Adria Quiñones

Adria Quiñones is a wildly successful technical writer who began writing novels for kids in order to have the experience of writing something that someone actually wanted to read. She is a member of Metro-NYC SCBWI's steering committee, hosts the chapter's Upper West Side write/sketch night, and helped found DIALOGS, the chapter's meet-up for kidlit creators from marginalized communities. Adria is a regular contributor to the Metro-NYC SCBWI‘s blog and was a winner of the SCBWI 2014 Midwinter Conference’s prestigious joke contest. In January 2015, Adria was named one of the winners of SCBWI’s Emerging Voices Award for her middle-grade novel, The Disappeared. She is currently at work on a picture book. http://adriaq.com/

**

Jolie Stekly

Jolie Stekly is a writer, instructor, and coach. She’s a long-time member of SCBWI and was recognized as SCBWI’s member of the year in 2009. She is a former regional advisor of the SCBWI Western Washington region. Her writing is represented by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio. www.joliestekly.com/

**

Don Tate

Don Tate is an award-winning author and the illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children. He is also one of the founding hosts of the blog, The Brown Bookshelf – a blog designed to push awareness of the myriad of African American voices writing for young readers. Don’s books have won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award, The Christopher Award, a Texas Institute of Letters Literary Award, a Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award. dontate.com

**

Jaime Temairik

Jaime Temairik is originally from Washington State and has recently moved to Philadelphia, PA, where she enjoys finding soft pretzels and colonial-era privy pits. Visit her online illustration portfolio at www.jaimetemairik.com to learn more about her books and work (but not her privy pits).

**

Lee Wind

Lee Wind, M.Ed., (and yes, the author of this blog post) is the official blogger for SCBWI (www.scbwi.blogspot.com) and is Captain of SCBWI’s Team Blog. His award-winning personal blog, I’m Here. I’m Queer. What The Hell Do I Read (www.leewind.org) has had over 2.5 million page loads and is a Children's Book Council "Great Diversity Blog." A writer of picture books through YA, his debut crowdfunded teen novel, "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill," publishes October 2, 2018.


Here's to an amazing #LA18SCBWI ahead!

Don Tate on winning the 2014 SCBWI Book Launch Award

The SCBWI Book Launch Award "Provides authors or illustrators with $2,000 in funds to help the promotion of their newly published work and take the marketing strategy into their own creative hands."

Don Tate, winner of the 2014 SCBWI Book Launch Award!

I connected with writer/illustrator Don Tate, winner of this year's award for his picture book, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton of Chapel Hill, to find out more...


Lee: Hi Don, congratulations on winning the 2014 SCBWI Book Launch Award!

Don: Thank you. I was visiting my in-laws in Las Vegas, when Lin Oliver and Steve Mooser contacted me with the good news. I felt like I’d won a jackpot, which, maybe, is a bad comparison. But, hey, I was in Vegas and I won something! Lin suggested that I respond to my lucky streak by throwing “a five on eight the hard way.” Lol! But really, I’m so thankful to SCBWI for this award and what it will allow me to accomplish in my marketing goals. 

Lee: You won the award to help promote and market your historical picture book, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton of Chapel Hill. Tell us about the book.

Don: The book was a long time coming, as most picture books are. I wrote and sketched the dummy about six years ago. After many revisions, several rejections, and two near sales that fell through, the book finally sold to Kathy Landwher of Peachtree Publishers. Yay!—that was an exciting day. POET will be my second authored book, my first authored and illustrated book.

It’s the story of George Moses Horton of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who became the first African-American poet to be published in the South. He was an accomplished poet, who earned a great deal of money. But he was also enslaved. 

As a young child, George wanted to learn how to read. But as a slave, there was no time. In fact, in some places in the South, a slave could have gotten themselves into big trouble for even trying. George didn’t give up, though. With the help of a found spelling book, and his mother’s Wesley hymnal, he taught himself how to spell and read. Soon, he composed poems inside of his head, which he committed to memory, because he didn’t know how to write with a pen. 

When George grew up, he was still enslaved. But his master allowed him to walk eight miles from the farm, to the village of Chapel Hill. On the campus of the University of North Carolina, George sold fruit and recited poetry. He became quite famous on campus. Before long, he learned to write his poems on paper, and he published a book. Then he made plans to purchase his freedom from the earnings. 

It’s never my goal to be didactic with a book, however one will not miss the message of how reading and literacy can change a person’s life. I hope this book will inspire children in that way. 

Lee: What a story! With $2,000.00 in funds from winning the award, and the book launching in 2015, what are your marketing and promotion plans?

Don: POET will publish in the fall of 2015, but marketing will begin much sooner. I am already slated to speak at the Texas Library Association conference next spring in Austin. POET will debut there, hopefully with some sort of posters and bling, but definitely with F&Gs. 

The money from the SCBWI award will help me to have several launch celebrations. One will be here in Austin, of course, with my local writer/illustrator peeps, family, friends, librarians—and hopefully a school! I launched my last authored book at an elementary school, and it was absolutely the best—for me and the students. 

I plan to have another launch celebration in North Carolina, perhaps two to three. I’d love to launch the book on or near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where George once worked as an enslaved poet. I’ll use the book to reintroduce the community to their little-known hometown hero. 

The other two events could take place at the North Carolina History Museum (a curator there was a source for the book), and/or at the Forsyth Public Library, a branch formerly named after Poet Horton. To get the community involved, I envision a poetry slam and/or acrostic poem writing competition (George wrote acrostic love poems for college student’s girlfriends). For planning, I’m considering bringing on Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, a book consulting company that offers creative marketing projects. Kirsten does a wonderful job with these types of events. However, I may just do the planning myself. Depends. I have a year to figured all this out. 

 The other part of my plan, which I am really excited about, is taking the book on tour. Along with my friend, author Kelly Starling Lyons, we are planning a book tour tentatively entitled: The Freedom Book Tour: Celebrating 150 Years of Emancipation. Ms. Lyons and I share a book on the subject of freedom and the Emancipation Proclamation, HOPE’S GIFT (Penguin). In addition, another book that I illustrated will publish next spring: THE AMAZING AGE OF JOHN ROY LYNCH (Eerdmans), written by another friend, Chris Barton. All three books deal with the subject of the end of slavery and the beginning of Reconstruction. Ms. Lyons also has another book set during the Reconstruction years, ELLEN’S BROOM (Penguin), which will also join the tour. Next year marks the end of the sesquicentennial observation of the end of slavery and the beginning of the Reconstruction Era in America. We will discuss our books, the importance of freedom, and introduce the historical figures we wrote about. Tour stops might include the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (OH), the National Civil War Museums (PA), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYC), or others. Planning begins now! 

 I must say also, thank you SCBWI for supporting diversity. I’m an author-illustrator of color, underrepresented in the publishing world. My book will be nonfiction, about an African-American historical figure. That makes POET a diverse title. There has been a lot of talk lately about the need for more diverse books. That is great! But talk is cheap. Money is what will encourage real change. With money from the SCBWI Launch Award, I will be able to work with my publisher to creatively market OUR book. Thank you, SCBWI, for helping my diverse title to reach its market. 

Lee: How long have you been a member of SCBWI, and how has it helped you on your journey?

Don: It seems like I’ve been a member forever. I joined the mid-90s, when I lived in Des Moines, Iowa. But at the time, there was no local chapter there. While I benefitted from the newsletters and literature, I had no real interaction with other book creators. I moved to Austin in the late 90s, and joined the local chapter here. Since then I’ve grown exponentially as both an illustrator and author. 

Austin has a large and prolific youth literature community. SCBWI is at its center. As a member, I enjoy that sense of community and mentorship. I was nervous about attending my first meeting. I wasn’t sure if I’d fit in. But I was welcomed in like an old friend. It seemed that members were stepping in line to help me to polish my craft. It was my friends through SCBWI who encouraged me to write in addition to illustrating. It’s not likely that I’d be a published author had I not joined SCBWI. 

Lee: What are your thoughts on finding the balance between promoting the books that are out or about to be out and writing and illustrating new work?

Don: Well, let’s add another element to that equation: school visits. My career is made up illustrating, writing, promoting (including social networking), and speaking at schools and conferences. School visits, in fact, are what keep this train chugging along. So, yes, finding balance can be a challenge. I wish I had a grand answer to offer, but I don’t. I just take it a day at a time. And I try not to think about the challenges too much. It’s like juggling, you just do it. Thinking about it will cause you to drop a ball. 

Lee: Thanks for answering my questions, and good luck with the launch of Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton of Chapel Hill!

Don: Thank you, Lee! And thank you SCBWI.

* * *

You can find out more about Don and his books at his website here.

Interested in applying for the SCBWI Book Launch Award yourself? Check out the guidelines here,  and good luck!

Illustrate and Write On, 
Lee