Showing posts with label Laura Segal Stegman. Show all posts

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Quirky Questions for Kidlit Authors: Guest Post #4 by Laura Segal Stegman - Laura Taylor Namey

Young Adult Author Laura Taylor Namey: TRIPLE CROWN

“I need to hang out with Jane Austen because I just want to hear exactly how she came up with this Mr. Darcy person. I want to know all about him. I want to know his origin story in her head…Give me Jane and a latte and six hours, and we're good.”

By Laura Segal Stegman

Click Here to Watch

Check Out All Four Posts in July!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

LAURA SEGAL STEGMAN

Hi, everyone. I'm Laura Segal Stegman, author of the Summer of L.U.C.K. trilogy, and I'm presenting four author conversations on SCBWI's blog in July.

My guest this week is Laura Taylor Namey, the New York Times and international bestselling author of a number of young adult novels featuring quirky teens learning to navigate life and love, including The Library of Lost Things and A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, which has been adapted for film. Her next book, If We Never End, is coming next year. A proud Cuban-American, she's a former teacher who says she finds herself wishing she was in London or Paris. But she's here today with us. So hi, Laura. It's a good name, yeah?

LAURA TAYLOR NAMEY

Hi, Laura. Yeah!

So we're going to do a triple crown of questions, starting with, do you have any suggestions for people who'd love to write a book for young readers in your genre?

LTN

I sure do. Always, my number one tip is to read widely in the genre and age group that you want to write in, whether that's middle grade, young adult, picture books, anything like that in the age group. And then choose the genre within that age group that you love, whether it's contemporary or sci-fi, high fantasy, low fantasy, whatever you choose, and just read, read, read until you think you've read too many. And then keep reading five more books, or ten more. And then also read outside your genre, because sometimes if you're writing YA contemporary romance, if you read a horror novel, you can get some amazing ideas on how to amp up stakes or plot stakes. No pun intended there. You can take all these elements that writers do so beautifully across genres, and you can mix them into the genre that you want to do.

Study those books. Then take your top five titles that you think are wonderful and try to articulate to yourself in a notebook or document why you think they're the best. Is it because of the prose level? Is it because of the stakes? Is it because of the characterization? Or is there a certain thing that just makes it have this special sauce for you? List those things out. And then as you go forward, just write, write, write, and try to emulate those things by incorporating them into your work.

That's great advice, such great suggestions. I read a lot in middle grade. But every time I've gone out of that genre, like when I read The Library of Lost Things that you wrote, I just loved it. And it did give me a lot of insight into how to articulate certain things that I hadn't thought of doing that way.

LTN

Well, thank you. Appreciate that.

The next question is, if you could have coffee with any author, dead or alive, who would it be?

LTN

This is so easy. I need to hang out with Jane Austen because I just want to hear exactly how she came up with this Mr. Darcy person. I want to know all about him. I want to know his origin story in her head. I would probably talk her ear off about that. So that's just really basic and simple of me, but give me Jane and a latte and six hours, and we're good.

Brilliant. That is brilliant. Okay, and to wrap things up, tell us about one of the times someone who read your work got in touch and what that meant to you.

LTN

Other than Reese Witherspoon sending me a letter about how much she loved my book?

Tell us about that!

LTN

Yeah, being in Reese's Book Club, she does write a personal note to every author she picks as part of her family, which is the loveliest thing. And when you're writing your draft, and you get an email, and in the top header is her email address, something happens to you. That was one of the coolest moments ever. She told me all of the things she enjoyed. For me, being such a fan of hers when I was growing up, watching her movies, being a fan of someone who creates beautiful things… for her to say something that I created meant something to her was one of the best days of my life. So that was a really cool one.

Laura Taylor Namey

As far as fans, I love to meet readers at festivals or at signings or book launches or anything like that. And I remember this one lovely gentleman at YALLFest brought a letter from his sister who couldn't come, and he stood in my line forever. He was trying to track me down just to give me this note that was handwritten in pencil. It had the cutest little pictures and all these things around it. This girl couldn't come to the festival to see me or any of her favorite authors. And she just had to tell me how much one of my books in particular meant to her and how it helped repair a relationship. And that was something that touched me so much. It was like, this is why you do this. It was so joyful. So I recorded a little video note for her and got to send that back to her. So if you're that person, thank you! That means a lot to me, and I still have it.

That's beautiful! Thank you for telling both those stories. Really touching. Thank you so much! Laura’s website has all kinds of information about her wonderful books! Look for links to her site and socials in the show notes. Thanks again!

LTN

Thank you.

Website www.laurataylornamey.com

IG https//www.instagram.com/laura_namey/

Tiktok https//www.tiktok.com/@laurataylornamey

Laura Taylor Namey is the New York Times and international bestselling author of young adult fiction including Reese's Book Club pick A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow. A proud Cuban-American, she can be found hunting for vintage treasures and wishing she was in London or Paris. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two children. This former teacher writes young adult novels featuring quirky teens learning to navigate life and love. She holds a BA in Elementary Education from the University of San Diego and is the winner of the Peggy Miller Award for excellence in young adult fiction. A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow has been adapted for film.

Laura Segal Stegman is the author of Summer of L.U.C.K., Ready or Not, and The Chambered Nautilus, a middle-grade trilogy from Young Dragons Press, all with Readers' Favorite Five Star reviews. She has been a presenter/panelist at literary events including NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), Orange County Children’s Book Festival, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ (SCBWI) SoCal Harvest Day, San Diego Writers Festival, and LitFest in the Dena. She also does school visits and such events as the STEM Teacher Summit and serves as a judge for writing competitions sponsored by Society of Young Inklings, among others. As a long-time publicity consultant, she created PR Tips for Authors, which has been presented by The Writing Barn, SCBWI, and elsewhere. Non-fiction writing credits include work in Los Angeles Times and School Library Journal’s Teen Librarian Toolbox, among others. www.LauraStegman.com

Laura Segal Stegman

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Quirky Questions for Kidlit Authors: Guest Post #3 by Laura Segal Stegman - Amar Shah

Middle Grade Sports Author/Graphic Novelist Amar Shah: FOURSQUARE

"You don't have to be the best athlete to be able to tell a sports story. My advice is to find what's emotionally at your core and expand on that. What's personal to you is going to be universal to everybody else."

By Laura Segal Stegman

Click Here to Watch

Check Out All Four Posts in July!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

LAURA SEGAL STEGMAN

Hi, everybody. I'm Laura Segal Stegman, author of the Summer of L.U.C.K. trilogy, and I'm presenting four author conversations on SCBWI's blog in July.

My guest this week is Amar Shah, middle grade author of the Play the Game basketball trilogy and the graphic memoir, Wish I Was a Baller. He's also a multiple Emmy-winning writer and producer in key roles at ESPN, Fox Sports, NFL Network, and the Orlando Magic. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, among others. And he still dreams of playing in the NBA one day. Watch for Wish I Was a Baller with a blurb from Newberry Medal winner and New Kid author Jerry Craft, and Time to Win, third in the Play the Game trilogy. They're both coming out in August.

Hello!

AMAR SHAH

Hi, Laura. How are you? It's a pleasure to meet you and see you again.

Thank you. Same here. Thanks for joining me today. We're going to do four quick questions. Let's start with, what book do you wish you'd written and why?

That's a fantastic question. I have to say Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie is the book that I really wish I had written or had the imagination to conjure up. As a South Asian, as an Indian American, Rushdie is in that sort of that halo of Mount Rushmore of writers that I've always looked up to. And that book, which is about the history of India and Pakistan, has got magical realism. It's got this really embedded storytelling, and what he does is both epic in its scale, and it's also intimate in its scope too. And for any writer to be able to do what he did on those pages is incredible. And I still go back to that book for inspiration in everything that I write.

Wow, that sounds fantastic! Along those same lines, if you could have coffee with any author, dead or alive, who would it be?

You know, it's funny. I have a photo of the writer that I've always wanted to meet and unfortunately will never get the chance to. That's going to be F. Scott Fitzgerald. I don't think any other writer has had the impact that Fitzgerald has had on me since I was in high school. In his life, and in his prose, but more importantly in the work that he put together. I mean, to write Gatsby at age twenty-seven, twenty-eight, the way he did, is amazing. I feel very lucky to have read that book at the right time. To get a chance to sit down with Fitzgerald and to pick his brain [and ask] what was inspiration to write these books. How he was inspired by so many other writers, like John Keats. Just to be able to sit down with someone like that and get his philosophy on writing – I would've been very lucky to have had that opportunity. But I do have his books to look back to for that inspiration for whenever I'm caught looking at that blank space on the screen.

Amar Shah

I totally get that. I read Gatsby when I was young. And then I read it in the last maybe ten years, and I felt that same love for his words. The way he writes is just beautiful.

With [Gatsby], I don't think there's a single book in American history that is as word-for-word perfect. I don't think there's a wasted opportunity in such succinct prose. It's still beautiful, and it still has resonance today.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I have two more questions. The first one, do you have a story about a time when someone who read your work got in touch? Tell us what it meant to you.

It was really fantastic when Play the Game–The Hoop Con was in the Scholastic Book Fair. Getting that sort of reach in terms of the book being in all of these different classrooms across the country, and having all of my friends who I grew up with [telling their kids], “Oh. I knew [him] growing up.” And [their kids] being able to pick up that book, and not just take a photo [with it] and send it to me, but to actually read it. For that book to resonate with them, and [for them] to see themselves in those characters – that was a terrific thrill.

I did get a message from a dad whose daughter was at a school where I spoke. My story resonated so much with her that she wanted to become a full-time writer. In high school, she was wavering. And then, all of a sudden, I helped inspire that.

Being able to be able to talk to students, being able to engage with teachers and have that impact, has been amazing. You never know who you're going to be able to touch with your story, especially people that don't necessarily see themselves on the page all the time.

Wow, that's very impactful. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, to wrap things up, do you have any suggestions for people who are interested in writing middle grade novels or graphic novels or any kind of books for young readers?

I've been very lucky that I've been able to write in both the prose format and also in the graphic novel format, and I think both are incredibly accessible for young readers. My niche is in sports, and what I love about sports is that it's never about sports. It's about everything else. And sports is simply a metaphor for what's going on.

For writers, if they're looking to get into the world of sports, there's so much now at their disposal and so many different sports, so many things in life and in middle school. You don't have to be the best athlete to be able to tell a sports story. So, my advice is to find what's emotionally at your core and expand on that. What's personal to you is going to be universal to everybody else.

Wonderful! Thank you so much for being here. Amar's website has all kinds of information about his incredibly rich background. It has pieces he's written and lots more. Look for links to his site and socials in the show notes. Thanks again.

Laura, thanks again. I appreciate it.

WEBSITE: amarshahwrites.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/amarshahism/

X/Twitter: https://x.com/amarshahism

Amar Shah is the author of the Play the Game basketball trilogy and the graphic memoir Wish I Was a Baller. A multiple Emmy-winning writer and producer, Amar has held key roles at ESPN, Fox Sports, NFL Network, and the Orlando Magic. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Orlando Sentinel, SLAM, and the Washington Post. Amar lives with his family in Orlando, Florida, where he still dreams of playing in the NBA one day. Visit him online at amarshahwrites.com.

Laura Segal Stegman

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Quirky Questions for Kidlit Authors: Guest Post #2 by Laura Segal Stegman - Jonathan Roth

Author/Illustrator Jonathan Roth: TRIPLE PLAY

“Just follow your heart and write the story that comes out of you.”

By Laura Segal Stegman

Click Here to Watch

Check Out All Four Posts in July!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This interview and the transcript have been edited for length and clarity.

LAURA SEGAL STEGMAN

Hi, everybody. I'm Laura Segal Stegman, author of the Summer of Luck trilogy, and I'm presenting four author conversations on SCBWI's blog in July.

My guest this week is incredibly talented author and illustrator Jonathan Roth, whose STEAM-themed works for kids include chapter books, graphic novels, and the true story, Almost Underwear, How a Piece of Cloth Travelled from Kitty Hawk to the Moon and Mars, which I just loved. It's a Kirkus Best Picture Book of 2024. He also teaches art to elementary school students, and he's working on Book 4 of Rover and Speck, his graphic novel series.

Hi Jonathan. So this is really an opportunity to get to know you a little. We're going to do a triple play of questions, and the first one is: what book do you wish you'd written and why?”

JONATHAN ROTH

It’s a hard question, because there's so many great books! But I was thinking of influences. My first series, Beep and Bob, has a little kid who goes to space school, and he's scared. In the back of my mind when I was writing it, I was thinking about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which imprinted on me when I was in high school. And it was meaningful that way. So of course I was thinking that I wanted to do a kid’s version. I wanted something irreverent, and funny, and strange, and space-based, and all that. I mean, not exactly. It's not at all like that, but that was my thinking at the time.

Then, after it came out, I realized that what had really imprinted on me came from further back, and that Beep, my little alien, was actually Snoopy. And that Bob, the little boy with a lot of anxiety, was kind of like Charlie Brown. So Peanuts -- that's what I started reading before I could probably even read. And for a long time, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I do graphic novels, but I'd say that if I could have anything like Peanuts, it’s probably the apex of the kind of things I'm trying to create.

Well, that's cool. That's really great. Now, since you're a teacher, I'd love to hear your suggestions for people who are interested in writing chapter books or graphic novels or any kind other books for young readers. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Of course, how long do we have? [chuckles] If I just had to give a couple of quick suggestions, number one is, “Go read.” Go to your bookstore, Barnes and Noble or your local indie. Read as many current kids’ books as you can, especially in your genre. If you're into picture books, read one hundred picture books. And the reason why I say “current” is there are a lot of people I've met who want to write picture books. They remember all their favorites and the classics and everything. And that's okay, but you really need a sense of what's going on today to see what's happening. Not so you can copy anything, or write to a trend, but because it's just good to know. Let's say you want to write a TV show, and the most recent TV shows you saw were “ER” and “MASH” and “I Love Lucy.” They're all classics, and I can't tell you that's not going to work, but if you haven't seen a TV show in the last twenty years, could you write and sell one to Netflix now? It's the same with kids’ books. Read a lot of current stuff.

Jonathan Roth

The other thing I'd say is don't write to any trends. Just follow your heart and write the story that comes out of you, or the subject, or whatever you're interested in. Because they can tell if you're faking it. Just give yourself permission to write what you want to write. And that's the best we can do.

Yeah, that's really great advice. When I started writing middle grade books, I was remembering my middle grade books from childhood, and I had to be given that advice too, to read current books. And now I love reading [kidlit]. There's so much in middle grade, picture books, and young adult, all kinds of things. There weren't those kinds of subjects when I was growing up. So it's really [helpful] to hear that advice.

Yeah, I talk to kids about not only Peanuts but reading comic books. That's how I learned to read. But what kids have now, like graphic novels – the range is so much greater than when we were kids.

Yeah, I read [one of your Rover and Speck graphic novels], and I read Pearl [by Sherri L. Smith, author, Christine Norrie, illustrator]. I never thought I would be into graphic novels, just like I thought I wouldn't be into novels in verse. But once I started reading them, I was amazed at how much good stuff there is out there.

To wrap things up, I'm going to ask you to tell us about one of the times that someone who read your work got in touch and what that meant to you.

One really meaningful thing happened with my book Almost Underwear, which is a true story about how the Wright brothers went to a Dayton department store in 1903 and bought some muslin, which became the wing cloth that covered their airplane. Years later [1969], Neil Armstrong took a piece of the original Wright brothers’ [muslin] to the moon. And then, just a few years ago, another little piece went up to Mars on Ingenuity.

One of my early readers, a teacher I know, told me she’d teared up a little. (That's happened to a few other people too.) Her father was an aviator, and her son is a commercial pilot, and she let me know that people like her father and son may act very stoic, but they have big hearts, and that [they understood that] this book is essentially about commemoration. How Neil Armstrong was such a good steward of being the first person to walk on the moon that he carefully chose a part of the first airplane to show that he stood on the Wright brother's shoulders. Like we all stand on each other's shoulders, no matter what we're trying to accomplish. This teacher said my book really got to the spirit of that kind of commemoration. She said you can have a big ego, or you can just recognize what came before you. So I was kind of touched to hear that she was touched.

That's lovely. I felt the same way reading that book, and I highly recommend it. Almost Underwear. It’s a provocative title!

I found in my research that the kind of muslin [the Wright brothers used], just one little throwaway sentence, was commonly used to make ladies’ undergarments at the time. There's my hook! This could have been underwear, and instead it went to Mars. So there we go.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Jonathan's website has activity kits, interviews with authors, and a lot more, and you can look for links to his site and socials in the show notes. Thank you again, Jonathan.

Thank you so much for interviewing me. Bye-bye.

WEBSITE: www.jonathan-roth.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/jonrothbooks

FB: Jonathan Roth Facebook

Jonathan Roth is an Earth-bound but space loving author-illustrator of fun, STEAM-themed books for kids including the chapter book series Beep and Bob (Aladdin/S&S), the graphic novel series Rover and Speck (Kids Can Press), and the amazing true story Almost Underwear: How a Piece of Cloth Traveled from Kitty Hawk to the Moon and Mars (Christy Ottaviano Books/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), which is a Kirkus Best Picture Book of 2024. He also teaches art to elementary students in Maryland.

Laura Segal Stegman is the author of Summer of L.U.C.K., Ready or Not, and The Chambered Nautilus, a middle-grade trilogy from Young Dragons Press, all with Readers' Favorite Five Star reviews. She has been a presenter/panelist at literary events including NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), Orange County Children’s Book Festival, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ (SCBWI) SoCal Harvest Day, San Diego Writers Festival, and LitFest in the Dena. She also does school visits and such events as the STEM Teacher Summit and serves as a judge for writing competitions sponsored by Society of Young Inklings, among others. As a long-time publicity consultant, she created PR Tips for Authors, which has been presented by The Writing Barn, SCBWI, and elsewhere. Non-fiction writing credits include work in Los Angeles Times and School Library Journal’s Teen Librarian Toolbox, among others. www.LauraStegman.com

Laura Segal Stegman

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Quirky Questions for Kidlit Authors: Guest Post #1 by Laura Segal Stegman - Liza Wiemer

Young Adult/Middle Grade/Picture Book Author Liza Wiemer: MOMENTS OF RECOGNITION

“For this young girl to take the experience of reading my book, and then to apply it to her life was, to me, so profound.”

By Laura Segal Stegman

Click Here to Watch

Check Out All Four Posts in July!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This interview and the transcript have been edited for length and clarity.

LAURA SEGAL STEGMAN

Hi, everybody. I'm Laura Segal Stegman, author of the Summer of Luck trilogy, and I'm presenting four author conversations on SCBWI's blog in July.

My guest this week is Liza Wiemer, an award-winning educator and public speaker. Her second young adult novel, The Assignment from Delacorte Press was named a Sidney Taylor Notable Book, among other honors. Her debut picture book is Out and About, A Tale of Giving. She's currently working on several picture books, a nonfiction book for children, and a middle grade book. Check out her website because I haven't even begun to paint the full picture of the amazing Liza's eclectic talents. Let's meet her and learn a little bit more. Hello!

LIZA WIEMER

Laura, thank you so much for having me. This is truly an honor.

It's my pleasure. Let’s talk about moments of recognition that you've experienced during your career. Tell us about times when people who've read your book or your work got in touch and what that meant to you.

I'm going to start by showing you my book, The Assignment, which is inspired by true events. It's about two brave teens who are given an assignment from their favorite teacher, a social studies teacher, to pretend that they're Nazis and either argue in favor of murdering Europe's eleven-million Jews or putting Jews in work camps, ghettos, and sterilizing them. And these two brave teens speak out and say, “This is wrong.” They won't do it, even when their classmates don't seem to have any kind of issue with this assignment. It is with this book that I'd like to address your question. There are three instances I want to share.

A few years ago, I was speaking in a large auditorium. At the end, it cleared out, except for me, the teacher, and one young man, and he came up to me. He said that he had read the book, and that it changed his whole perspective. He was thinking about killing himself. His parents had moved him to our area in his last years of high school, and he was really missing his friends and struggling, and that reading The Assignment changed his whole perspective. And I'm thrilled to say that years later now – it’s been at least three years – he's doing great. And that really was so humbling.

Liza Wiemer

And then last school year, I got an email from a girl who had just finished eighth grade. She wrote to tell me that after reading my novel, she had made the decision to poll other girls in her grade because she herself had been experiencing sexual harassment. And it seemed that other girls were experiencing that too.

So, she polled every single girl in her entire grade, then she and another young woman presented this to the principal and the teachers. And it wasn't an easy thing to do at all. What she did was so incredibly brave, and I thought, “Wow.” For this young girl to take the experience of reading my book and then to apply it to her life was, to me, so profound. The idea that we need to be upstanders… that we need to not be silent when we see injustice is the whole message of the book.

Since the book came out, I've given nearly 700 workshops on the novel, about not being a bystander, about speaking up against all forms of hatred, bigotry, and injustice. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was presenting at a school, and a young woman walked past me. At first, she said, “Thank you so much,” and she walked out of the room. Then she turned around and came back with tears streaming down her face. This time, she said, “Thank you so much. I need to tell you how much what you had to say meant to me. To talk about the need for kindness and compassion in this world instead of being rude and cruel and mean to one another.”

One of the things that I’d talked about was the fact that that in this country, we're very fortunate to have free speech. We know about hate speech, but what's really missing is informed speech. And that even though we have the right to say things that are hateful, it really harms the essence of who we are. That really resonated with her. So, this is what keeps me motivated and driven to do the work that I'm doing.

And then I'm also very fortunate to present Out and About: A Tale of Giving for younger kids, a book about helping others in an anonymous way. Doing [things] in a way where you're not there for the recognition. It's such a universal theme, an important theme. These books are really giving me the opportunity to reach students of all ages. And I love it!

Those are incredibly powerful stories. And thank you for sharing them, to be able to have your work make those kinds of impressions on young people. And think of all the hundreds that didn't come up to you. Those three alone are beautiful stories of the value of literature and of doing good, and speaking up and all those things that you mentioned. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It's profound and it's humbling and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Again, thank you. Liza's website has curriculum guides, videos, excerpts from her interviews, and lots more. So, look for links to her site and her socials below. Thank you again, Liza.

Thank you so much, Laura. It’s been an honor to be with you.

WEBSITE: https://www.lizawiemer.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/lizamwiemer/

BS: https://bsky.app/profile/lizawiemer.bsky.social

FB: https://www.facebook.com/liza.wiemer

Liza Wiemer is an award-winning educator with over twenty years of teaching experience. Her second novel, The Assignment, was published by Delacorte Press and has received 12 honors, including being named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book. To date, The Assignment has also been translated to Russian, Polish, Italian, and Korean and has been optioned for film. In addition, Liza has had two adult nonfiction books published and several short stories included in the New York Times bestselling “Small Miracles” series. Since August 2020, she has presented over 650 talks and workshops across the globe. She’s been interviewed by media outlets like NPR, BBC, and ABC, and gave a TedXTalk at the UW-Madison. Her debut picture book, Out and About: A Tale of Giving, was published by Kalaniot Books in August 2023. A graduate of UW-Madison, Liza has two married sons and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband, Jim.

Laura Segal Stegman