A second Illinois SCBWI member has stepped up to join in the effort to help diverse authors and illustrators attend the annual conference on Nov 5. Children’s book author Urania Smith has also stepped up to sponsor an attendee. We have a wide definition of diverse author/illustrator. So if you are in or near the […]
Illinois Writers and Illustrators conference scholarship
On November 5, the Illinois chapter of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) is having its annual conference, Prairie Writer’s and Illustrator’s Day. The one-day conference is held at the Wojcik Conference Center, at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. This conference contains valuable information for people who craft children’s books, with information about
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I Am An Anomaly
I volunteer at my town’s Senior Citizen’s center a few times a week, working in the computer lab associated with our public library. There I perform crowd control when things get busy, and answer questions about using the computer, printing, and various websites. I get paid with a free cup of coffee (when I remember
I’m fighting racism, one step at a time
Yesterday after reading an article on Facebook about police dismissing the protests of a young black male because…well, because he was a young black male and therefore what he said didn’t matter, (click here to see the article that started the discussion) an acquaintance on Facebook commented that she supported #blacklivesmatter but recognizes that racism
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Writing cross-culturally
I am currently (July 2016) teaching a class of authors about writing diverse characters, my Spice of Diversity class. I received a student question that I’ve chosen to answer here, because I think it deserves a wide, thoughtful, answer. I was asked, …when I wanted to write a Spanish hero, another writer with a Hispanic last
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Empathy – Diversity class
Today I’m blogging about the E-word. Empathy. You know, that ability to see things from another point of view. To understand and at least temporarily share someone else’s feelings, even if that someone else is outwardly very different from yourself. A lot has happened recently. Parents jerked through social media because a mother dared to be
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Even if no one paid me
I laughingly call writing my sub-minimum wage job. Counting the time involved in coming up with an idea, writing the first draft, revising, editing and creating a dozen or more successive drafts, gnawing at my fingernails, sleep-walking and dreaming the story, the ROI is nothing to write home about. And then there\’s all the time
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Removing The Masks
Earlier today fellow author Gabrielle Luthy asked me a question about a post showing a bunch of women at a Trump rally wearing t-shirts saying – Make America White Again. This turned out to be a bigger question than I first realized, so it’s getting a bigger answer. Sorry, but I decided to get on
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#ILLibrary15 Illinois Library Association conference panel on Diversity
In October 2015, I was moderated a panel of authors and illustrators of diverse books at the Illinois Library Association meeting in Peoria, Il. B A Binns, Miranda Paul, Chris Raschka, Laura Park This well attended panel presentation took place in a double room at the Peoria Civic Center on October 23, 2015 in front of a
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Class on incorporating diversity in your writing
Authors, are you interesting in using more diversity on your writing? Beginning August 31, I will be teaching the Adding The Spice Of Diversity to your writing class in conjunction with the RWA Online chapter. Course objectives: 1. Gain a better understanding about what is meant by diversity2. Learn why diversity is important to writers,
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