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Delacorte editors Michelle Poploff and Krista Marino checking e-mail.
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Editor Michele Poploff with David Amaditz.
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Q&A session around the fire pits.
The Spring Retreat at the Mountainside Retreat Center at Bethany College was blessed by beautiful weather, supportive friends, good food and a pair of insightful editors from Delacorte Press.
Throughout the four critique sessions built into the weekend, participants shared work in progress and collected helpful suggestions for ways to improve their writing. While painful at times, the gentle criticisms helped point out areas needing more clarity while the praise for sections well done bolstered confidence and provided encouragement to keep on writing and submitting our work.
The Illustrators’ Master Class on March 17th was a wonderful time! John Manders and Carol Baicker–McKee gave a wonderful presentation…we all learned so much. The topic was CHARACTER DESIGN:
How to make your characters consistent through out the book’s pages, and How to make your characters appear to have a life outside of the book…bringing them to life.
After the presentation we had portfolios reviews…and spent time getting to know one another. Definitely worthwhile, and as intended.
“I thought there might be a leaning toward the inexperienced who sometimes hijack such presentations with elementary questions. I’ve seen this happen even at the national conferences where a percentage are beginners who haven’t done significant preparation. This group was really up to speed and ready for what you had to offer. I agree, there’s always something worth hearing, and always fun to see how other pros are doing their thing.”—Anni Matsick, Central PA
November 2006
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Casual Chat
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Critique Group
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Illustrators
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Jim Murphy Keynote
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Manuscript Reviews
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On the Wall
Our 2006 Fall Conference got underway Friday evening with a social hour followed by round table critique groups. Writers brought a manuscript in progress to share with fellow attendees, who first encouraged and then made suggestions on ways to improve the work.
Saturday morning started with a funny and informative keynote address by Jim Murphy. A series of workshop sessions filled the time between the talk and lunch. Sessions covered topics such as writing easy readers and creating characters. Illustrators enjoyed a round table discussion facilitated by John Manders and Leda Miller.
Between workshops, attendees browsed the bookstore, tried their luck as the silent auction for prizes such as baskets of books, SCBWI memberships and critique sessions with published authors.
Attendees also met with editors or published authors for manuscript critiques, strolled through the illustrators’ room to admire the portfolio display or read the On The Wall contest entries.
After a buffet lunch of soup, salad, sandwich fixings and a yummy selection from the ever–popular desert table, editors Melanie Cecka (Bloomsbury), Elizabeth Crooker Carpentiere (Cobblestones) and Harriet Ziefert talked about submission procedures at their houses.
More workshop sessions rounded out the afternoon, covering topics such as writing a query letter that gets noticed or how to add to your income and collect clips by writing magazine pieces.
As usual, the conference provided members with an opportunity to make new friends, renew acquaintances, get advice on a work in progress, learn about different aspects of writing and illustrating and just get away from the daily grind for twenty–four hours to talk children’s books with fellow authors and illustrators.
