Next weekend is the Florida Conference for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I always look forward to it. The workshops are great and the speakers are so motivating that I come home and write, write, write for weeks. Where else can you be surrounded by gifted creative writers and illustrators for a whole weekend?
It never fails to amaze me. Elaine Landau is always there, working away on her laptop, adding to her 300+ nonfiction titles that the kids in my school just love to read. Frank Remkiewiecz, illustrator, is usually there with his Horrible Harry and Froggy Books that I love so much. They are both so kind and supportive. Both Elaine and Frank have given me free books for my school which they generously autographed. It can't get any better than that.
Besides our regular authors that attend every year, like Joyce Sweeney, Donna Gephart, Alex Flinn, Laurie Friedman and Gloria Rothstein, there will be authors there that we don't get to see often. This year, Bruce Hale will be back to entertain us and teach us, and hopefully to do his Elvis impersonation at the Saturday Night Costume Ball! I've hobnobbed with Dave Barry, Kate DiCamillo, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Pat Street, David Diaz and Carol Nevius.
We "catch" colds from one another. Can we catch talent? All I know is if one of our authors sneezes, I hope to be there downwind to snatch up any droplets of talent that I can. One thing for sure...authors are extremely generous and giving of time to share with those who are in the pre-author status. They give back to their craft over and over. Miami, here I come!
3 comments:
See you there!
Good! It feels like forever since I have seen you. But then this has been a forever kind of year!
One person actually wrote 300 books? That's hard for me to wrap my brain around. Have fun at the conference.
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